Experimental Study of the Effect of Different Air Gap Orientations on Performance of Fire Protective Clothing

The effect of both horizontal and vertical air gap orientations on the heat transport through the fabric-air gap arrangement and on the thermal protective performance of the clothing is analyzed experimentally using two different setups, Horizontal Thermal Protective Performance Tester, and Vertical Thermal Protective Performance Tester. The fabric ensembles are exposed to a direct flame exposure of 60 kW/m(2) for an exposure period of 10 s. Variation of temperature rise with time is determined for single and multilayer fabric ensembles for both orientations at different air gap widths. Burn time and thermal protective performance of the fabric samples is evaluated for the same. Effect of using different fabrics on the performance of fire protective ensemble is also discussed. Both repeatability and uncertainty analysis has been performed for the setups to ensure the reliability of the data.