AircraftFire Colloquium on the flammability threat of composites on aeronautical fire safety
A two and half days Colloquium focused on:
- Fundamentals and state of the art in fire safety in aeronautics
- New issues for fire safety in aeronautics
- AircraftFire and beyond: Discussion panel on follow-up activities for fire safety in aviation
The Context:
For 20 years, the fire threat in aeronautics has been drastically reduced. But in new generation aircrafts the massive use of flammable composites, substituting metallic structural elements, changes the understanding of fire risk, and influences the fire safety approach for passenger and crew safety and survivability during fire incidents.
As recent contribution the FP7 project AircraftFire (AcF) is aimed at the characterisation of the flammability and burning properties of aeronautical composites for fuselage, wings, structures, fuel tanks, cabin materials and their influences on the mechanical behaviour and at the investigation of the effects on inflight fire growth in the cabin and on passenger evacuation during post-crash fire.
The Objectives:
The first part of the meeting, on July 8th, will provide "Fundamentals and state of the art in fire safety in aeronautics".
Experts from the AircraftFire project will present the main physical phenomena involved in aeronautical fires as well as the experimental and numerical methodologies developed by AircraftFire.
The second part of the meeting, on July 9th and 10th, will be particularly focused on "New issues for fire safety in aeronautics". Areas such as the fire retardants, the mechanical strength of burning composites and ignition by equipment devices are not in the focus of the AircraftFire project. External experts will share their experience to identify the remaining lack of knowledge and understanding in these domains.
An open panel discussions will address topics of aeronautics fire safety related to batteries, seat foam, thermo-acoustic blankets, engine fires, avionics equipment, fuel tank inerting, oxygen threat (masks and fuel cell), firefighting. Presentations outlining the current regulations and the physical aspects of certification tests for the materials complete the holistic approach of this event.
This approach takes researchers to share their knowledge with industrial, political and regulatory actors and vice versa in order to identify the new challenges on materials and modelling to improve further the fire safety in aeronautics.
A synthesis of the days will be made by a representative of Airbus and a representative of the European Commission will conclude the meeting.
Increasing the knowledge on the interdependencies and mechanisms related to the fire threat in new generation aircraft shall help all participants of this event to express more easily the medium and long term needs for research and innovation and to identify break-through technologies to reach the "Holy Grail" of fire safety.
Should you have any further inquiries please contact us at aircraftfire(at)ensma.fr and/or visit the colloquium website http://www.easn-tis.com/aircraftfire/(opens in new window).
Keywords
Fire Safety in Aeronautics