Evaluation Of Aircraft Interior Panels Under Full-scale Cabin Fire Test Conditions

Abstract

Realistic full-scale fire tests demonstrated the potential safety benefits of advanced interior panels in transport aircraft, and displayed the characteristics of cabin fire hazards. The tests were conducted in a C-133 airplane, modified to resemble a wide-body interior, under postcrash and in-flight fire scenarios. The safety benefit of the advanced panel ranged from a 2-minute delay in the onset of flashover when the cabin fire was initiated by a fuel fire adjacent to a fuselage rupture, to the elimination of flashover when the fuel fire was adjacent to a door opening or when an in-flight fire was started from a seat drenched in gasoline. Analysis of the cabin hazards measured during postcrash fire tests indicated that the greatest threat to passenger survival was cabin flashover, and that toxic gases did not reach hazardous levels unless flashover occurred.

Flame retardants and heat release: review of traditional studies on products and on groups of polymers

“…Similar work to the furniture work discussed earlier was also performed for mattresses , for a series of wall linings in Europe , and for a series of special wall linings, namely aircraft panels . In the case of mattresses, the transition region in the cone calorimeter is still at roughly the same 3 min average value for heat release rate as for upholstered furniture: 100–200 kW/m 2 average (3 min).…”

“…Using time to flashover as the primary end‐point, the FAA work established a full‐scale aircraft post‐crash scenario to evaluate and ‘rank’ the fire performance of the aircraft interior materials, while monitoring all major fire properties . Then, the FAA evaluated and ‘ranked’ a group of five representative generic cabin interior wall panel constructions in the full‐scale aircraft fire test scenario . Subsequently, the FAA established a series of input conditions and pass/fail criteria using the OSU test to obtain results that could be used to ‘rank’ the five materials in the same order as they were ranked by the full‐scale tests .…”

Performance Simulation of Evacuation Procedures in Post-Crash Aircraft Fires

“…The probability is small that two doors cannot be opened among one group of exits at the same time (8,8, and 25%, respectively), based on the analyses of a large number of cases during evacuations in aircraft accidents [31]. The Airworthiness Standards: Transport Category Airplanes require that 50% of the exits should be opened during the demonstration of evacuation procedures [32].…”

“…Various data of temperature, heat, and gas were collected, and the effects of external ambient wind conditions, pool size, and door openings were examined. Sarkos and Hill also simulated the interior fire scenario in the cabin after a post-crash [8].…”

Fire Tests for Composites

“…The Federal Aviation Administration devised full-scale in-flight and post-crash fire tests to assess the fire behaviour of composites used in the cabin of wide-body aircraft [79][80][81][82][83]. The post-crash test involves subjecting a C-133 aircraft fuselage to an external jetfuel fire.…”