ISO 12136:2011 determines and quantifies the flammability characteristics of materials, in relation to their propensity to support fire propagation, by means of a fire propagation apparatus (FPA).

Material flammability characteristics that are quantified in ISO 12136:2011 include time to ignition, chemical and convective heat release rates, mass loss rate, effective heat of combustion, heat of gasification and smoke yield. These properties can be used for fire safety engineering and for fire modelling.