Browse Topic: Fire detection

Items (110)

Fire Resistant Container Design, Performance, and Testing Requirements

10/27/2020

This Aerospace Standard (AS) specifies the minimum design and performance criteria and testing methods of passive fire resistant containers (FRCs) used either: a In those cargo compartments of civil transport aircraft where they constitute one means of complying with applicable airworthiness regulations, or b On a voluntary basis, when deemed appropriate by operators to improve fire protection in aircraft cargo compartments where airworthiness regulations do not mandate their use.

AGE-2 Air Cargo

Fire Resistant Container Design, Performance, and Testing Requirements

AS8992-TEST-REC (Historical)10/27/2020

AGE-2 Air Cargo

Self-Powered Alarm Fights Forest Fires, Monitors Environment

TBMG-3766409/01/2020

In a new study, a team of Michigan State University scientists designed and fabricated a remote forest fire detection and alarm system powered by nothing but the movement of the trees in the wind. The device, known as MC-TENG — short for multilayered cylindrical triboelectric nanogenerator — generates electrical power by harvesting energy from the sporadic movement of the tree branches from which it hangs.

Test Method for Aerospace Firewall Sealant Flame Penetration

AS5127/2C (Historical)07/07/2020

This SAE Aerospace Standard (AS) describes the test methods to determine the flammability performance and capability to control the passage of, and effects from, fire on aircraft firewall sealing compounds. The methods are based requirements of FAR Part 25 Sections 25.865, 25.867, 25.1191, and 25.1193 and may be used to demonstrate compliance with the requirements established by FAA AC 20-135. This standard shall be used in conjunction with applicable material specifications.

AMS G9 Aerospace Sealing Committee

Fire Containment Cover - Operation and Use

ARP6905-TEST-REC (Historical)04/23/2020

This SAE Aerospace Recommended Practice (ARP) provides guidelines for the effective operation and use of fire containment covers (FCCs). Technical Standard Orders (TSOs) C203 and C90e (and later revisions) incorporate AS6453, and provide the Minimum Performance Standards (MPS) for an FCC design. The net and pallet used with the FCC must be approved using the updated net and flammability requirements in TSO C90e and later revisions. However, fire containment performance also requires this equipment is properly used. Fire safety is compromised when FCCs are used in an inadequate manner.

AGE-2 Air Cargo

Fire Containment Cover - Operation and Use

ARP6905 (Current)

04/23/2020

AGE-2 Air Cargo

Laser-Based System Detects Fires Even in Dusty, Harsh Environments

TBMG-3575601/01/2020

Researchers have developed a new laser-based system that offers an efficient and low-cost way to detect fires in challenging environments such as industrial facilities or large construction sites. With further development, the system could eventually detect fires that are more than a kilometer away. It could be used in a variety of industries such as waste management facilities, power supply plants, food processing factories, and textile factories.

Products of Tomorrow: December 2019

TBMG-3570712/01/2019

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.

NIST/NASA Study Shows One Detector Doesn't Fit All for Smoke in Spacecraft

TBMG-3287209/01/2018

What had been a peaceful and productive mission for the six men aboard the Russian space station Mir, including U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger, nearly became a tragic nightmare during the evening of Feb. 24, 1997. A lithium-perchlorate canister, designed to generate oxygen via a chemical reaction, suddenly burst into flames when activated. Although the fire was quickly subdued, a dense, life-threatening smoke — different in form and movement from its gravity-bound counterpart on Earth — rapidly filled the station. Being confined in a limited area 360 kilometers (224 miles) above the nearest fire brigade made the situation even more precarious.

Advanced Data Acquisition Technology Improves Global Weather Predictions

TBMG-2884105/01/2018

Northrop Grumman Corporation Azusa, CA

Gas Sensors with Contact Pads

TBMG-2615601/01/2017

Innovators at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have developed advanced hydrogen and hydrocarbon gas sensors capable of detecting leaks, monitoring emissions, and providing in situ measurements of gas composition and pressure. These compact, rugged sensors can be used to optimize combustion and lower emissions, and they are designed to withstand harsh, high-temperature environments (e.g., silicon carbide (SiC) sensors can operate at 600 °C). NASA Glenn is actively seeking industrial partners to develop and apply these cutting-edge sensors cooperatively in new applications.

Fire Protection in Military Ground Vehicles

2016-01-140404/05/2016

Fire protection, active and passive, has been, and is, an important area of concern during the design, development and deployment phases for all modern ground vehicles. All US military vehicles carry handheld fire extinguishers, and many tactical and all combat vehicles have automatic fire protection systems that protect the crew, engine, and in some cases, external components such as fuel tanks and wheels, from potentially catastrophic combat events involving fire. Vehicle designs also mitigate fire hazards by separating the vehicle occupants from the most flammable materials, e.g., fuel and ammunition, as much as practical. Explosion protection of the crew and passengers in military vehicles is a unique application with unique requirements that must balance suppression actions with safety limits. This paper presents an overview of general guidelines related to protecting military ground vehicle crews from injury due to fire, and lessons learned from the experiences of fielded systems

Hodges, Steven E.

Safety Considerations - Smoking in Lavatories of Transport Aircraft

ARP4740A (Current)02/24/2016

This ARP addresses the issue of passengers smoking in aircraft lavatories and the need to improve warnings about the danger of fire caused by smoking.

S-9B Cabin Interiors and Furnishings Committee

CubeSat-Compatible, High-Resolution, Thermal Infrared Imager

TBMG-22391

07/01/2015

A small, adaptable, and stable thermal imaging system was developed that can be flown on an aircraft, deployed on the International Space Station as an attached payload, launched on a ride-share as an entirely self-contained 3U CubeSat, flown on a small satellite, or be a co-manifested satellite instrument. When the instrument design is proven, multiple copies of it could be assembled and aligned into an instrument array to enable large-swath thermal imaging from space, all to provide more detailed spatial and temporal data for biomass burning and land surface temperature studies than has heretofore been available from orbit. The instrument has an Earth-observing expected noise equivalent differential temperature (NEDT)

Fabrication of Single-Mode, Distributed-Feedback, Interband Cascade Lasers

TBMG-21645

03/01/2015

Type-II interband cascade lasers (ICLs) based on the GaSb material system represent an enabling technology for laser absorption spectroscopy in the 3-to-5-μm wavelength range. Instruments operating in this spectral regime can precisely match strong absorption lines of several gas molecules of interest in atmospheric science and environmental monitoring, specifically methane, ethane, other alkanes, and inorganic gases. Compared with non-semiconductor-based laser technologies, ICLs can be made more compact and power efficient, ultimately leading to more portable, robust, and manufacturable spectroscopy instruments.

Miniaturized Schottky Diode Sensors for Hydrogen and Hydrocarbon Detection at High Temperatures

TBMG-20676

10/01/2014

A miniaturized Schottky diode hydrogen and hydrocarbon sensor with the structure of catalytic metal-metal oxide-silicon carbide (SiC) has been developed. The major innovation of this work is the use of the metal oxide, palladium oxide (PdOx), as a barrier layer between the catalytic metal and the SiC in the gas-sensing structure. A major advantage of adding a PdOx barrier layer between the gate metal and the SiC is to prevent and alleviate chemical reactions between the gate metal and the SiC. Without the PdOx barrier layer, the gate metal and the substrate can easily form metal silicides at high temperature, leading to diode structure disruption. The metal oxide barrier layer can be incorporated into a gas-sensing structure by standard deposition techniques in a controlled manner. This oxide naturally forms with Pd in Pd-based gas sensor systems and can disrupt the gas sensor structure when formed in situ in an uncontrolled manner. However, purposely including this oxide in the

Global Fire Detection Constellation

TBMG-20730

10/01/2014

Wildfires that start in backcountry areas sometimes burn for hours before being detected and reported. Satellites offer a vantage point from which infrared sensors can detect fires. Individual satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) offer infrequent overpasses, making the delay from ignition to detection unacceptably long. Geostationary satellites offer a platform from which to maintain a round-the-clock vigil, but lack geographic precision, and cannot detect a rather small fire within a large pixel definitively above noise.

Intensity-Calibrated Hydrogen Flame Spectrum

TBMG-2032208/01/2014

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) uses large quantities of liquid hydrogen and has expended significant effort in the development, testing, installation, and maintenance of hydrogen fire detectors based on ultraviolet, near-infrared, mid-infrared, and/or far-infrared flame emission bands. Yet, prior to this work, there was no intensity-calibrated broadband hydrogen-air flame spectrum in the literature, making it difficult to compare the merits of different radiation-based hydrogen fire detectors.

Test Method for Aerospace Firewall Sealant Flame Penetration

AS5127/2B (Historical)05/06/2014

This SAE Aerospace Standard (AS) describes the procedures for the flammability testing of aircraft firewall sealants in accordance with the requirements of FAR Part 25 Sections 25.865, 25.867, 25.1191, and 25.1193. This test method is intended to determine the capability of sealant materials to control the passage of and effects from fire.

AMS G9 Aerospace Sealing Committee

2013 Create the Future Design: Machinery & Equipment Category Winner

TBMG-1774511/01/2013

Erik Herold, Jason Ethier, and Ivan Wang Dynamo Micropower, Boston, MA

Review of Canadian Flight Deck and Cabin Smoke and Fire Incidents: 2001-2010

2013-01-230709/17/2013

This paper presents a review of the flight deck and cabin fire and smoke incidents reported to the Canadian airworthiness authorities over a ten year span. The fire and smoke related diversions are categorized to identify areas where efforts could be increased to improve safety. The costs of diversions are estimated to identify areas where operators could reduce costs by seeking technologies to reduce the number of diversions without any impact on safety. Only twenty-eight investigation reports into fire and smoke incidents onboard aircraft have been published over the past three decades. These reports are not sufficient to identify areas where operators can reduce their operating costs. The Canadian airworthiness authorities received over 1,000 smoke and fire incidents from the years 2001 to 2010, of which, over 680 reported fire and smoke in the flight deck and cabin compartments for various makes and models of aircraft. Some of these flight deck and cabin incidents were related to

Lebbin, Paul

Test Method for Fire Suppression Systems in Bus and Coach Engine Compartments

2013-01-020804/08/2013

This paper presents a recently developed method meant to act as a tool for objectively assessing and comparing the performance of automatic fire suppression systems. This methodology specifies requirements and procedures for evaluating the efficiency and performance of automatic fire suppression systems permanently installed in the engine compartments of buses and coaches. The testing is done according to SP method 4912 and carried out in a test enclosure where the fire performance of different suppression systems can be objectively assessed in a well-defined way. The test methodology includes a battery of fire tests simulating different engine loads, air flows and fire scenarios. Every tested system is rated according to its performance. The test method also includes testing of re-ignition due to hot surface ignition of liquid fuels.

Brandt, Jonas, Modin, Håkan, Rosen, Fredrik, Försth, Michael, Ochoterena, Raúl

Test Method for Aerospace Firewall Sealant Flame Penetration

AS5127/2A (Historical)03/20/2013

AMS G9 Aerospace Sealing Committee

Multiple-Frame Detection of Subpixel Targets in Thermal Image Sequences

TBMG-1549501/01/2013

The new technology in this approach combines the subpixel detection information from multiple frames of a sequence to achieve a more sensitive detection result, using only the information found in the images themselves. It is taken as a constraint that the method is automated, robust, and computationally feasible for field networks with constrained computation and data rates. This precludes simply downloading a video stream for pixel-wise co-registration on the ground. It is also important that this method not require precise knowledge of sensor position or direction, because such information is often not available. It is also assumed that the scene in question is approximately planar, which is appropriate for a high-altitude airborne or orbital view.

Detection of Carbon Monoxide Using Polymer-Composite Films With a Porphyrin-Functionalized Polypyrrole

TBMG-1388706/01/2012

Post-fire air constituents that are of interest to NASA include CO and some acid gases (HCl and HCN). CO is an important analyte to be able to sense in human habitats since it is a marker for both pre-fire detection and post-fire cleanup.

Onboard Science and Applications Algorithm for Hyperspectral Data Reduction

TBMG-1385806/01/2012

An onboard processing mission concept is under development for a possible Direct Broadcast capability for the HyspIRI mission, a Hyperspectral remote sensing mission under consideration for launch in the next decade. The concept would intelligently spectrally and spatially subsample the data as well as generate science products onboard to enable return of key rapid response science and applications information despite limited downlink bandwidth. This rapid data delivery concept focuses on wildfires and volcanoes as primary applications, but also has applications to vegetation, coastal flooding, dust, and snow/ice applications.

Advanced Fire Detector for Space Applications

TBMG-1391006/01/2012

A document discusses an optical carbon monoxide sensor for early fire detection. During the sensor development, a concept was implemented to allow reliable carbon monoxide detection in the presence of interfering absorption signals.

The Development of a Standard Test for Assessing the Effectiveness of Transit Vehicle Fire Extinguishing Systems

2012-01-098604/16/2012

Few standard approval tests exist for fire extinguishing systems for commercial vehicles, such as transit vehicles, coaches etc. Therefore, a representative test article has been constructed to evaluate the fire extinguishing performance of current in-house fire protection systems. This data will then be used as a benchmark against which the performance of future fire extinguishing systems can be judged. The test article is a fire-hardened simulation of a rear-engine transit bus. Several fire locations are used, in two configurations: “small” and “large”. The former encompasses diesel fuel spray fires and small, obscured diesel pool fires some containing additional wood chips; the latter represents a more developed diesel fuel spray and larger diesel pool fires. Tests have also been run simulating the ignition of a diesel fuel spray impinging on a hot turbocharger. Parameters pertaining to restrike have also been investigated. Suppression tests have been carried out varying the type

Chattaway, Adam, Dunster, Robert, Weller, Paul, Peoples, Joey

A Comparison of Various Fire Detection Methodologies in Transit Vehicle Engine Compartment Fire Protection Systems

2012-01-098304/16/2012

Distinctly different fire hazards exist within the engine compartment of a transit vehicle and various detection methodologies may be employed to detect fire events arising from these hazards. The engine compartment presents a particularly challenging environment and it is important to select the correct methodology to ensure timely detection response in the early stages of the development of a fire whilst minimizing nuisance alarms. The choice of the correct detection methodology for a specific fire hazard is therefore determined by the suitability of the methodology for the detection of the anticipated fire event within the environment in which it is required to operate. This paper presents experimental data to demonstrate the variation in the response times of different detection methodologies in the presence of common fire events in the form of simulated flaming fuel fires and a simulated electrical fault in the form of an overheated electrical cable. The data presented relates to

Smith, Paul, Chattaway, Adam, Peoples, Joey

The Development of a Standard Test for Assessing the Effectiveness of Transit Vehicle Fire Extinguishing Systems

2012-01-0986-TEST-REC04/16/2012

Chattaway, Adam, Dunster, Robert, Weller, Paul, Peoples, Joey

Designing COTS LCD Displays For Rugged Applications

TBMG-1308203/01/2012

Innovation, demand, and falling prices have resulted in high quality large format commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) LCD displays moving from the living room to high availability, mission critical applications.

Polymer Electrolyte-Based Ambient Temperature Oxygen Microsensors for Environmental Monitoring

TBMG-1048707/06/2011

An ambient temperature oxygen microsensor, based on a Nafion polymer electrolyte, has been developed and was microfabricated using thin-film technologies. A challenge in the operation of Nafion-based sensor systems is that the conductivity of Nafion film depends on the humidity in the film. Nafion film loses conductivity when the moisture content in the film is too low, which can affect sensor operation. The advancement here is the identification of a method to retain the operation of the Nafion films in lower humidity environments. Certain salts can hold water molecules in the Nafion film structure at room temperature. By mixing salts with the Nafion solution, water molecules can be homogeneously distributed in the Nafion film increasing the film’s hydration to prevent Nafion film from being dried out in low-humidity environment. The presence of organics provides extra sites in the Nafion film to promote proton (H+) mobility and thus improving Nafion film conductivity and sensor

Multi-Parameter Aerosol Scattering Sensor

TBMG-1046207/01/2011

This work relates to the development of sensors that measure specific aerosol properties. These properties are in the form of integrated moment distributions, i.e., total surface area, total mass, etc., or mathematical combinations of these moment distributions. Specifically, the innovation involves two fundamental features: a computational tool to design and optimize such sensors and the embodiment of these sensors in actual practice.The measurement of aerosol properties is a problem of general interest. Applications include, but are not limited to, environmental monitoring, assessment of human respiratory health, fire detection, emission characterization and control, and pollutant monitoring. The objectives for sensor development include increased accuracy and/or dynamic range, the inclusion in a single sensor of the ability to measure multiple aerosol properties, and developing an overall physical package that is rugged, compact, and low in power consumption, so as to enable

Understanding Infrared Detector & Emitter Technology

TBMG-1054707/01/2011

Generally speaking, sensor manufacturers are driven to improve performance (i.e. offering greater sensitivity, smaller packages, more features) and lower costs. The prioritization of these sometimes conflicting demands varies with each target sensor application. For detector manufacturers, this translates into an assortment of requirements including high sensitivity, expanded range of operation, more integrated products, and low cost solutions. Final detector selection will depend on which attributes are most important for the target application.

Amperometric Solid Electrolyte Oxygen Microsensors With Easy Batch Fabrication

TBMG-954404/01/2011

There is a great need for oxygen microsensors for aerospace and commercial applications. Current bulk or thick-film solid electrolyte oxygen sensors have the disadvantages of being large in size, high in power consumption, difficult to batch-fabricate, and high in cost.

2010 Create the Future Design Contest Safety and Security Category Winner

TBMG-880211/01/2010

(Winner of an HP Workstation)

Processing Nanostructured Sensors Using Microfabrication Techniques

TBMG-815007/01/2010

Standard microfabrication techniques can be implemented and scaled to help assemble nanoscale microsensors. Currently nanostructures are often deposited onto materials primarily by adding them to a solution, then applying the solution in a thin film. This results in random placement of the nanostructures with no controlled order, and no way to accurately reproduce the placement. This method changes the means by which microsensors with nanostructures are fabricated. The fundamental advantage to this approach is that it enables standard microfabrication techniques to be applied in the repeated manufacture of nanostructured sensors on a microplatform.

Safety Considerations — Smoking in Lavatories of Transport Aircraft

ARP4740 (Historical)

11/02/2009

This ARP addresses the issue of passengers smoking in aircraft lavatories and the need to improve warnings about the danger of fire caused by smoking.

S-9B Cabin Interiors and Furnishings Committee