Flammability of Automotive Child Restraint Seats for Use in Aircraft.

摘要

Child restraint seat used in aircraft are based on automotive designs that are required to pass a horizontal burn rate test method. The flammability of child seat materials was gauged against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) vertical Bunsen burner tests method. Basically, the vertical test prescribed in Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 25.853 (a)(1)(II) allows a bum length of 8 inches and flame time of 15 seconds after exposure to a Bunsen burner flame for 12 seconds. Eight child restraint seats were purchased from a retail store. The seats were disassembled in order to cut test specimens from the various seat components. Because of the size of the seat and use of materials, in most cases it was not possible to prepare the required sample size and replicates. However, this did not impact the overall conclusions regarding the flammability of the materials tested. The test results indicated that the large majority of materials would not meet the FAA vertical fire test criteria. Also, some of the failed materials burned across the entire sample length, and others produced high flames or dense smoke. The findings are consistent with the knowledge that a horizontal bum test is far less severe than a vertical bum test.