- Author
- Grand, A. F. | Valys, A. J.
- Title
- Assessment of Burning Characteristics of Aircraft Interior Materials.
- Coporate
- Southwest Research Inst., San Antonio, TX
- Sponsor
- National Aeronautics and Space Admin., Moffett Field, CA
- Report
- NASA-CR-166390, April 1982, 200 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- NAS2-10148
- Keywords
- aircraft compartments | aircraft interiors | combustion | fire tests | calorimeters | composite materials | toxic gases | weight loss
- Identifiers
- materials flammability
- Abstract
- A room-sized calorimeter was used to quantify the heat and smoke release characteristics of composite aircraft seat cushions. The 729 cubic foot chamber was instrumented to monitor the rate of heat release, cumulative energy release, rate of weight loss, and evolution of visible smoke and fire gases. Eight "advanced" design seats and five commercial airlines salvage seats were tested under conditions of high radiant heat flux ignition. All of the advanced materials showed substantially lower heat and energy release characteristics than the commercial salvage seats, and lower evolution of smoke. Of the advanced materials, Seats 6, 7, and 8 (polyimide foam cushions) had the lower rates of heat release and total energy release. Seat 7 was the lowest of all the cushion composites in terms of visible smoke and carbon monoxide evolution. An assessment of the toxic gas evolution of the eight advanced materials indicated that none of the specimens evolved a high enough concentration of toxic gases under these test conditions to permit differentiation among the specimens. This is not to suggest that these materials could not produce significant toxic insults under other test scenarios or actual fire conditions.