Pyrolysis characteristic study on seat hard materials of China’s high-speed train

in order to avoid and prevent the fire accident happened in china’s high-speed trains, the pyrolysis behaviors of two typical combustible hard materials used in the train’s chairs were investigated based on the thermogravimetric analysis. the experiments with polycarbonate (pc) and fiberglass reinforced plastic (frp) were conducted over a wider heating rate range from 20 to 80 k min−1. only one peak appeared in the mass loss rate of pc but three regions for frp pyrolysis. the pyrolysis of pc showed a far higher starting temperature and four times mass loss rate peak value compared with frp. three common model-free methods (flynn–wall–ozawa, kissinger–akahira–sunose and kissinger methods) were applied to estimate the kinetic parameters at different conversion rates. the existence of three regions for frp pyrolysis could be attributed to three different reactions according to the various activation energy values. the average activation energy of pc was about 206.49 kj mol−1, while the various energy values for frp were 108 kj mol−1, 125 kj mol−1 and 165 kj mol−1 for the three regions, respectively. during the whole pyrolysis process, the activation energy of pc was always higher than that of frp.