- Author
- Marker, T. R.
- Title
- Heat Release and Flammability Testing of Surrogate Panels. Technical Note.
- Coporate
- Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ
- Sponsor
- Department of Transportation, Washington, DC
- Report
- DOT/FAA/AR-TN01/112; ANM-114, December 2001, 24 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
- panel walls | heat release | flammability testing | laminates | synergism | paints
- Identifiers
- renovation; surrogate; spares; cutout
- Abstract
- The International Aircraft Materials Fire Test Working Group (IAMFTWG) was fonned in an effort to work jointly with the aviation community on issues relating to the fire testing and certification of aircraft interior materials. Among other things, the working group investigates new problems that arise with current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) test methods, including the Bunsen burner, the 2 gallon-per-hour seat fire blocking and cargo liner tests, the Ohio State University (OSU) Rate-of-Heat Release Apparatus, and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) smoke chamber. Because of the level of complexity associated with these and other fire tests, unforeseen problems often arise that need to be addressed to insure that certification tests conducted throughout the United States and foreign countries are consistent and according to the intent of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs). In addition to the cultivation of certification testing methods and related equipment, the IAMFTWG was tasked to investigate problems in a variety of areas to support harmonization work involving the FAA and the European Joint Airworthiness Authorities (JAA). These areas were initially broken down into four categories, and individual subgroups were fonned to investigate issues in: continued compliance (task group one), minor changes to qualified systems (task group two), quality control (task group three), and material systems renovation and repair (task group four). One area that task group four focused on dealt with certification issues of renovated/refurbished interior material systems, and more specifically, the difficulty of administering certification tests when appropriate buildup materials needed for test coupons are unavailable. Numerous approaches exist for qualifying altered materials. One approach is to use a similar, but nonidentical panel known as a surrogate panel for determining the heat release and smoke emission of in-service panels. Because no data existed which investigated the relationship between surrogate materials and actual materials, a series of tests were run to initially examine the variability of surrogate panels supplied by independent manufacturers. All of the surrogates tested were manufactured according to a common specification, which would enable an initial evaluation of the concept's validity. This report discusses the difficulties associated with the fire test approval of renovated material systems and investigates the results of heat release and flammability tests conducted using surrogate materials produced by three independent manufacturers.