A Porter-Style Fire Severity Ratio: _An Exploratory Investigation in Combustion Conceptual Framework, Toy Simulation, and Empirical Analysis of Cone-Calorimeter Polymer Data_

The Porter Ratio is a proposed domain-independent framework for describing the balance between processes that preserve, restore, or propagate organized regimes and processes that disperse, disrupt, or erode them. In its most general form, R = λself / λenv, where λself represents self-sustaining dynamics and λenv represents disruptive environmental dynamics. The broader Porter framework proposes that many persistent natural systems can be interpreted in terms of this sustaining-versus-disrupting balance, with transitions toward self-maintaining organization occurring when internally sustaining processes become sufficiently dominant. The framework has been proposed as a conceptual unification applicable across multiple domains, including biological organization, complex systems, cognition, and physical processes. The present report does not attempt to establish that broader framework. Instead, it investigates one specific physical application: combustion. Combustion provides a useful test case because flames are self-sustaining yet readily extinguished when heat production, oxygen availability, and related sustaining processes are overcome by cooling, dilution, moisture, or other quenching influences. This report explores whether the sustaining-versus-quenching logic of the Porter Ratio can be expressed as a practical composite severity metric for combustion. The investigation proceeds in two stages. First, a physically motivated toy Monte Carlo simulation comprising 3,750 combustion scenarios spanning gases, vapors, and solids examines whether a sustaining-versus-quenching ratio behaves coherently as a threshold variable. Within the simulation, a transition near R ≈ 1 separates sustained combustion from extinction with 94.2% classification accuracy and ROC AUC = 0.986, demonstrating internal mathematical consistency of the proposed formulation. Because the simulation incorporates the ratio into its own outcome rule, these results illustrate the internal behavior of the framework but do not constitute independent empirical validation. Second, the same conceptual framework is applied to published ASTM E1354 cone-calorimeter measurements for 15 common polymers tested at 50 kW/m² external heat flux. An exploratory dataset-normalized severity ratio, Rfire,real ≈ 0.004505 × (FIGRA × pHRR / TIG), combines the Fire Growth Rate Index (FIGRA), peak heat release rate (pHRR), and time to ignition (TIG) into a single dimensionless quantity for material comparison. Within the analyzed dataset, the resulting index exhibits a Spearman rank correlation of ρ = 0.968 with FIGRA, produces chemically intuitive rankings across hydrocarbon, halogenated, and fluorinated polymers, and summarizes multiple standard fire-test outputs into a single interpretable severity metric. The proposed ratio is presented as an exploratory organizing framework and composite index rather than as a replacement for established fire-engineering metrics or as evidence of a new law of combustion. Because the analyzed dataset contains only successful ignition experiments and lacks failed-ignition or failed-sustained combustion outcomes, the present study cannot determine whether a universal physical threshold exists near R ≈ 1. Establishing such a threshold remains an open empirical question requiring independent experimental datasets containing both successful and unsuccessful combustion regimes. Accordingly, this report should be interpreted as one empirical application of the broader Porter Ratio framework, not as a demonstration that the broader framework has been established. Its principal contribution is to show that a sustaining-versus-quenching perspective can be formulated in a physically interpretable way for combustion, can organize both simulated and published combustion