One-sided flame spread phenomena of a thermally thin composite cotton/fiberglass fabric

摘要

As an experimental necessity, past flame spread studies have relied on fast burning cellulosic papers. For the longer duration tests planned for the International Space Station a 50% fiberglass, 50% cotton composite fabric is better suited for the novel fuel feeding system in the compact hardware design of a current microgravity combustion experiment. The fabric's combustion characteristics in normal gravity include unexpected cases where a flame can be sustained on one side of the fuel. One-sided flames are smaller in size than their two-sided counterparts, and propagate at half the speed. Surface temperature distributions were measured using infrared imaging and indicated a high temperature region caused by the non-flammable fiberglass. Breaching the fiberglass matrix made it possible for the flame to transfer to the other side of the fuel, suggesting that the fiberglass matrix acts as a flame arrester.