Experiment study of the altitude effects on spontaneous ignition characteristics of wood

This paper has studied the influence of ambient pressure and oxygen content on spontaneous ignition of wood by conducting contrastive experiments with wood slab exposed to high temperature radiation at two different altitudes. The measurement of mass loss, time to ignition, and surface temperature of wood are carried out. Results show that mass loss rate of wood at high altitudes (3650 m) is higher than the one at low altitudes (50 m), while ignition delay time of the sample at high altitude is shorter. The surface temperatures at the time of ignition in the two different places are both close to each other, which indicates that the pressure did not affects the ignition temperature. The theoretical analysis on the phenomenon of different ignition behavior of wood in these two altitude environments has been presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.