Original Article Journal of Fire Sciences 2017, Vol. 35(1) 62–79 Ó The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734904116680222 journals.sagepub.com/home/jfs Comparison between European chimney test results and actual installations Perttu Leppa ¨nen 1 , Manuela Neri 2 , Davide Luscietti 2 , Sandro Bani 3 , Matti Pentti 1 and Mariagrazia Pilotelli 2 Date received: 14 April 2016; accepted: 30 October 2016 Abstract European standards regulate the certification procedure for determining chimney class tempera- ture and the distance at which to install chimneys from combustible materials. These standards prescribe the heat stress test and the thermal shock test. The high number of roof fires due to the presence of a chimney that have recently occurred in European countries seems to be due to a weak certification procedure. In this article, experimental tests and numerical simulations have been performed to highlight the major differences between real and test conditions to identify critical aspects of the current certification procedure. The influence of the position of the chim- ney in the test structure, the thermocouples’ positioning and the thermal shock test initial condi- tion have been investigated. It has been shown that flammable materials’ temperatures measured in the certification procedure can be lower than those in real installations, and this is mainly due to the fact that exhaust gas temperature in the certification procedure of chimneys can be even 350°C lower than in real installations. Then, real installations represent a more severe condition. Keywords Flue gas temperature, combustible materials, thermal shock test, heat stress test, chimney, fire safety 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland 2 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy 3 ANFUS, Brescia, Italy Corresponding author: Perttu Leppa ¨nen, Department of Civil Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, P.O. Box 600, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland. Email: perttu.leppanen@tut.fi