The Early History of the Cone Calorimeter

Abstract

The Cone Calorimeter—ISO 5660 and ASTM E1354—has been the primary bench-scale test for measuring the heat release rate for fires ever since the early 1990s. The technical details of how to construct and operate the instrument has been well documented in the standards, in reports, and in published papers. But the background for its development had not been earlier published. Because the Cone Calorimeter represented a ground-breaking, new approach to heat release studies, the present paper describes some of the historical context and laboratory developments which led to the invention of the calorimeter.