FireDOC Search

Author
Apostolakis, G. E. | Catton, I. | Paulos, T. | Paxton, K. | Jones, S.
Title
Findings of a Review of Spacecraft Fire Safety Needs. Final Contractor Report.
Coporate
California Univ., Los Angeles
Sponsor
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH
Report
UCLA ENG 92-19; NASA CR-189181, July 1992, 206 p.
Distribution
Available from National Technical Information Service
Keywords
spacecraft | fire safety | combustion | fire prevention | space stations | weightlessness | aerospace environments
Abstract
The review was a workshop to guide UCLA and NASA investigators on the state of knowledge and perceived needs in spacecraft fire safety and its risk management, for an introduction to an analytical and experimental project in this field. The report summarizes the workshop discussions and includes the visual aids used in the presentations. Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methods, which are currently not used, would be of great value to the designs and operation of future human-crew spacecraft. Key points in the discussions were the importance of understanding and testing smoldering as a likely fire scenario in space and the need for smoke damage modeling, since many fire-risk models ignore this mechanism and consideronly heat damage.