- Author
- Tewarson, A. | Zalosh, R. G.
- Title
- Flammability Testing of Aircraft Cabin Materials.
- Coporate
- Factory Mutual Research Corp., Norwood, MA
- Report
- RC89-TP-201463; OROE8.RC,
- Book or Conf
- AGARD/PEP Symposium on Aircraft Fire Safety. May 22-26, 1989, Portugal, Spain, 33/1-12 p., 1989
- Keywords
- aircraft compartments | flammability testing | fire spread | heat release rate | smoke generation | toxic gases | mass optical density
- Identifiers
- fire initiation
- Abstract
- Before the new Federal Aviation Administration flammability regulations for aircraft cabin maerials were announced, various laboratory flammability tests were conducted on generic aircraft panel materials. Besides convective heat release rates and smoke optical densities, which are included in the new regulations, the tests included material ignitability, fire propagation rates, chemical heat release rates, and toxic gas generation rates. Data obtained using different test methods often differ significantly for the same generic panel materials. For example, critical heat fluxes for ignition as measured in the NIST Ignition Apparatus are 16% to 110% higher than those measured in the FMRC apparatus. In the case of fire propagation, test data are reported for electrical cables as well as panel materials. The cable fire propagation rates are correlated against a fire propagation index based on heat release rate and ignitability data. These data may be useful in assessing the in-flight fire hazard of various cabin materials. In the case of heat release rates per unit surface area, if data from different test facilities are normalized by incident heat flux and compared in terms of the ratio of chemical, and convective heats of combustion to the effective heat of gasification, there is agreement to within at least one significant figure for most materials. Aircraft panel material smoke generation potential, as measured by mass optical density, is shown to be highly dependent on the light shource and the ventilation conditions in the fire test. Since these conditions differ substantially for post-crash fires and in-flight fires, flammability guidelines for smoke generation, toxicity, and corrosivity during in-flight fires may entail different test methods than currently used to screen cabin materials for post-crash fire survivability.