- Author
- Gross, D. | Loftus, J. J. | Lee, T. G. | Gray, V. E.
- Title
- Smoke and Gases Produced by Burning Aircraft Interior Materials. Final Report.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Department of Transportation, Washington, DC
- Report
- NBS BSS 018; NA-68-36; DS-68-16, June 1968, 90 p.
- Distribution
- Available from Government Printing Office
- Contract
- FA66NF-AP-7
- Keywords
- aircraft interiors | smoke | combustion products | fire tests | interior finishes | toxic gases | smoke chamber test | thermal degradation | optical density
- Identifiers
- materials flammability
- Abstract
- Measurements are reported of the smoke produced during both flaming and smoldering exposures on 141 aircraft interior materials. Smoke is reported in terms of specific optical density, a dimensionless attenuation coefficient which defines the photometric obscuration produced by a quantity of smoke accumulated from a specimen of given thickness and unit surface area within a chamber of unit volume. A very wide range in the maximum specific optical density was observed. For the majority of materials, more smoke was produced during the flaming exposure test. However, certain materials produced significantly more smoke in the absence of open flaming. During the smoke chamber tests, indications of the maximum concentrations of CO, HCl, HCN and other selected potentially toxic combustion products were obtained using commercial colorimetric detector tubes. A study was made of the operation, accuracy and limitations of the detector tubes used. Measurements of the concentrations of HCl also were made using specific ion electrode techniques. Qualitative identification of the major components of the original test materials was accomplished primarily by infrared absorption spectrophotometry.