Experimental investigation of thermal degradation for three kinds of wood

Wood is one of the largest materials used currently for house product. Thus, it is a necessity to studythe thermal behavior of wood during fire. For that raison, this work aims to compare three kinds ofwood (one raw wood and two plywoods) with their thermal degradation data.Wood is present under different form like raw wood or plywood. These two sorts of wood have beentested to determinate their general thermal behavior during fire. Tests have been conducted in a conecalorimeter apparatus at heat fluxes from 10 to 60kW.m-². The mass loss and the time to ignition havebeen continuously monitored during each experiment. Moreover, the cone calorimeter has beencoupled with two gas analyzers (FTIR and HORIBA) in order to characterize the exhaust gasesemitted during the experiments.This work is composed of two parts. Firstly, a comparison of the thermal behavior of the three kinds ofwood is led. It concerns the stages of the thermal degradation and the estimation of ignitability andcombustibility parameters. Secondly, the comparison concerns the gases emitted during the thermaldegradation of the two plywoods and the raw wood. Indeed, one of the major aspects of thedegradation comes from the smoke and the products of combustion. Indeed, in the past physical andthermal aspect have been conducted in different kinds of wood, but few on the gases emitted duringthe combustion whereas this aspect of the degradation represent a lot of hazards to take into account.