Thermal protective performance of clothing exposed to radiant heat

Abstract

Designing firefighter protective clothing requires many factors to be taken into consideration. Constructional parameters along with proper selection of materials are very critical and need to be extensively studied. In the present work, construction parameters of Kevlar woven and conex non-woven materials have been studied. Full factorial experiments have been conducted by varying factors like pick density of woven cloth and punch densities of non-woven fabric at three levels at three different heat fluxes. ANOVA has been done to analyse the significance of different factors and interaction between them. Time to cause second-degree burn injury has been found to be linearly related to pick and punch densities, where as it has non-linear relationship with variation in heat fluxes. Kevlar woven material with higher pick density combined with lower punch density produced maximum time before second-degree burn occurs.