Abstract
The thermal shrinkage of protective clothing during fire exposure plays a crucial rule in reducing the clothing protective performance. The transversal reduction in the fabric perimeter around the body due to the fabric thermal shrinkage causes a dynamic reduction in the air gap between the clothing and the body. This leads to a dynamic change in the heat transfer modes within the gap. Despite of its influential effect on the clothing performance, the thermal shrinkage of protective clothing during fire exposure has not been yet addressed in the literature. This can be attributed to the absence of a gap model that can capture the reciprocal change in heat transfer modes within the gap due to clothing shrinkage. This paper develops a finite volume model to investigate the influence of the fabric thermal shrinkage on protective clothing performance. A special attention was drawn to the model of the air gap between the clothing and skin as it responds directly to the clothing thermal shrinkage. The influence of a variation in the fabric shrinkage rate and the overall reduction in the fabric dimensions was investigated. The paper demonstrates that the clothing protective performance continuously decreases with the reduction in the fabric dimensions while the decay in the clothing protective performance is limited to small shrinkage rates of the fabric. Moreover, this decay in the clothing performance vanishes at high shrinkage rates of the fabric.
Highlights
Protective clothing is widely used in many industries and applications such as petroleum and petrochemical industries and municipal firefighting to seek protection from thermal and fire exposures
This paper develops a finite volume model to investigate the influence of the fabric thermal shrinkage on protective clothing performance
The clothing system comprises a fire-resistant fabric that is exposed to a heat flux of about 80 kW/m2 from a lab burner, the human skin that consists of epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous layers and an air gap enclosed between the fabric and the skin
Summary
Protective clothing is widely used in many industries and applications such as petroleum and petrochemical industries and municipal firefighting to seek protection from thermal and fire exposures. The air gap between the fabric and skin plays an essential role in determining the performance of protective clothing during fire exposure This role was acknowledged in the literature in several studies. Ghazy and Bergstrom (2010) developed a numerical model for single layer protective clothing that considers the combined conduction-radiation heat transfer between the fabric and the skin. Ghazy and Bergstrom (2011) further investigated the influence of the conduction-radiation in the gap between protective clothing and the skin on the overall performance of the clothing. The reduction in the gap width caused by thermal shrinkage and the overall protective performance of the clothing depends on the total reduction in fabric dimensions and the shrinkage rate of the fabric. The influence of a variation in the fabric shrinkage rate and the reduction in the fabric dimensions on the clothing protective performance was studied to capture different forms of fabric thermal shrinkage
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