Aviation Fuels With Improved Fire Safety

The reduction of the fire hazard of fuel is critical to improving survivability in impact-survivable aircraft accidents. Despite current fire prevention and mitigation approaches, fuel flammability can overwhelm post-crash fire scenarios. The Workshop on Aviation Fuels with Improved Fire Safety was held November 19-20, 1996 to review the current state of development, technological needs, and promising technology for the future development of aviation fuels that are most resistant to ignition during a crash. This book contains a summary of workshop discussions and 11 presented papers in the areas of fuel and additive technologies, aircraft fuel system requirements, and the characterization of fuel fires.

The reduction of the fire hazard of fuel is critical to improving survivability in impact-survivable aircraft accidents. Despite current fire prevention and mitigation approaches, fuel flammability can overwhelm post-crash fire scenarios. The Workshop on Aviation Fuels with Improved Fire Safety was held November 19-20, 1996 to review the current state of development, technological needs, and promising technology for the future development of aviation fuels that are most resistant to ignition during a crash. This book contains a summary of workshop discussions and 11 presented papers in the areas of fuel and additive technologies, aircraft fuel system requirements, and the characterization of fuel fires.

This book describes the Conference on Fire and Smoke-Resistant Materials held at the National Academy of Sciences on November 8-10, 1994. The purpose of this conference was to identify trends in aircraft fire safety and promising research directions for the Federal Aviation Administration's program in smoke and fire resistant materials. This proceedings contains 15 papers presented by distinguished speakers and summaries of the workshop sessions concerning toxicity issues, fire performance parameters, drivers for materials development, and new materials technology.

Two basic ways in which NASA-generated technology is being used by the fire safety community are described. First, improved products and systems that embody NASA technical advances are entering the marketplace. Second, NASA test data and technical information related to fire safety are being used by persons concerned with reducing the hazards of fire through improved design information and standards. The development of commercial fire safety products and systems typically requires adaptation and integration of aerospace technologies that may not have been originated for NASA fire safety applications.

The two principal objectives of this book were (1) to identify promising materials technologies, design issues (both overall and for individual components), and fire performance parameters (both full scale and for individual components) that, if properly optimized, would lead to improved fire and smoke resistance of materials and components used in aircraft interiors; and (2) to identify long-range research directions that hold the most promise for producing predictive modeling capability, new advanced materials, and the required product development to achieve totally fire-resistant interiors in future aircrafts. The emphasis of the study is on long-term innovation leading to impacts on fire worthiness of aircraft interiors ten to twenty years hence.

The Conference Proceedings contains 38 papers presented at the Propulsion and Energetics Panel 73rd Symposium on 'Aircraft Fire Safety' which was held 22 - 26 May 1989 in Sintra, Portugal. The Symposium was arranged in the following sessions: Review of Fire-Related Aircraft Accidents (3); Fire Safety Standards and Research Programmes (6); Aircraft Internal Fires (9); Aircraft External Fires (2); Fire Safety of Military Weapon Systems (3); Fire Hardening by Advanced Materials and Structural Design (8); Passenger Behaviour in Emergency Situations (3); and Passenger Protective Equipment (4). The Technical Evaluation Report and and Addendum are included at the beginning of the Proceedings. Questions and answers of the discussions follow each paper. The last AGARD review on the subject took place in a Specialists' Meeting in 1975, followed by a Working Group Report in 1979 and Lecture Series in 1982. The purpose of the Symposium was a review of the present state-of-the-art and of the last improvements. Although the safety standards in aviation are already very high, there is still room for improvements. They are listed in the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Technical Evaluation Report and in the Addendum.