- Author
-
Reinhardt, J. W.
- Title
- Evaluation of Water Mist With and Without Nitrogen as an Aircraft Cargo Compartment Fire Suppression System.
- Coporate
- Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ
- Report
-
DOT/FAA/AR-01/121,
February 2002,
59 p.
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM: Federal Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center's Fire Safety Section's Full-Text technical reports page (in Adobe Acrobat portable document format [PDF]): http//www.fire.tc.faa.gov/reports/report.stm AVAILABLE FROM National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900; Rush Service (Telephone Orders Only) 800-553-6847; Website: http://www.ntis.gov AVAILABLE FROM: Federal Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center's Fire Safety Section's Full-Text technical reports page: http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/reports/report.stm
- Keywords
-
water mist
|
nitrogen
|
aircraft compartments
|
cargo space
|
fire suppression
|
flammable liquids
|
aerosols
|
explosions
|
fire load
|
ignition sources
|
extinguishing
|
temperature measurement
|
oxygen concentration
|
pressure
- Identifiers
- buld load fires; containerized fires; aerosol explosion; minimum performance standard; onboard inert gas generator system simulation (OBIGGS)
- Abstract
- This final report documents the full-scale test evaluation of a water mist system with and without nitrogen, that would be available from an onboard inert gas generation system (OBIGGS), against a series of standardized aircraft cargo fires. The International Aircraft Systems Fire Protection Working Group (IASFPWG) requested this testing program to evaluate identified Halon 1301 replacement agents for aircraft cargo compartment fire suppression systems, namely water mist and nitrogen. The systems were challenged against the fire threats specified in the Minimum Performance Standards (MPS) for Aircraft Cargo Compartments Gaseous Fire Suppression Systems, DOT/FAA/AR-00/28, modified with a draft new test protocol for an exploding aerosol can fire, in order to evaluate nongaseous agents. The MPS specifies four cargo fire test scenarios: bulk-load fires, containerized fires, flammable liquid fires (surface burning), and aerosol can explosions. Each fire test scenario is repeated five times. The bulk-load and containerized fire tests, which are basically deep-seated fires, use shredded paper loosely packed inside cardboard boxes to simulate a Class A fire load. In the bulk-load fire scenario, the boxes are placed directly onto the cargo compartment floor, while the boxes used in the containerized fire scenario were stacked inside an LD-3 container. In the surface burning test (Class B fires) 0.5 gallon (1.89 liters) of Jet A fuel was placed in a 2' x 2' steel pan. The aerosol can explosion scenario employed a simulator that released a flammable/explosive mixture of propane, alcohol, and water into an arc from a sparking electrode. The fire test results showed that the water mist system (WMS) passed three out of the four MPS tests, meeting the acceptance criteria defined for bulk-load fires, containerized fires, and surface burning tests.