FIRE WILL TAKE TWICE as long to burn through an airliner fuselage if materials being tested by the US Federal Aviation Administration achieve their promise, giving greater time for passenger evacuation and for firefighters to bring the blaze under control.
The development could have great lifesaving potential, notably in similar situations to that of the British Airtours Boeing 737-200 which suffered an engine fire and aborted take-off at Manchester, UK, in 1985, in which more than 50 people on board lost their lives; fire penetrated the aircraft hull in seconds once fuel from punctured tanks ignited.
The FAA and the UK's Civil Aviation Authority are collaborating on ways to "harden" aircraft fuselages against burn-through. This project and other FAA-sponsored anti-fire research is designed to increase the survival rates for occupants during in-flight and post-crash fires.
A promising side-effect, however, might be that of a weight-saving, because some of the materials under test are lighter than the traditional glassfibre-reinforced plastic batting which are normally used in the insulation of hulls.
At the FAA's technical centre in Atlantic City, New Jersey, one of the new materials, a heat-stabilised oxidized polyacrylonitrile fibre processed for higher carbon content, prevented burnt-through for 5min - double the time it typically takes fuel-fed flames to penetrate an aircraft's aluminum-and-fibreglass fuselage.
Source: Flight International
