Development of a Small Scale Test Apparatus for the Evaluation of Thermal Barrier Materials

摘要

A small scale test apparatus has been constructed and used to evaluate the relative ability of four thermal barrier materials to protect aluminum from heat damage. The apparatus used 30 x 30 cm (1 ft x 1 ft) 0.64 cm (0.25 in) aluminum panels. Several configurations of the glass and ceramic fiber cloth barrier materials (Startex 6N, Startex 4N, SilTemp, and Claretex 1925 B567) were tested to determine the degree of protection provided by the thermal barrier materials. The results obtained with the small scale apparatus have been correlated with those obtained with a modified ASTM E119 apparatus at the Fire Research Section of the National Research Council of Canada. Although the results from the small scale tests do not compare with those from the ASTM E119 test in an absolute sense, they give the same relative ranking of the ability of the barrier materials to protect aluminum from heat damage. This suggests that inexpensive small scale testing can be used to screen and rank the ability of different materials and combinations of materials to protect an aluminum substrate from heat damage.