The use of small-scale test data to characterize some aspects of fire fighting foam for suppression modeling

Abstract

Concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of fluorocarbon-based fire fighting foams. To aid in developing alternative fire fighting foam formulations, fire suppression models are being constructed to evaluate the performance of new, innovative formulations. Some of the input parameters for the fire suppression models are specific to the foam and need to be measured experimentally. A small-scale test apparatus was developed in this study to measure the foam loss mechanisms (i.e., solution evaporated and drained) as well as the time to fuel ignition. In this test, the mass evaporated and drained is continuously measured for a static layer of foam exposed to a fixed irradiance level. The test apparatus was used to quantify the behavior of a single formulation of MIL-SPEC 6% aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) for a variety of test conditions. Methods for using the data from the small-scale testing in fire suppression models were developed.