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The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders
Fire safety is a concern in space travel, particularly with the current plans of increasing the length of the manned space missions, and of using spacecraft atmospheres different than in Earth, such as microgravity, low-velocity gas flow, low pressure and elevated oxygen concentration. In this work,...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5760683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29317681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18398-4 |
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author | Link, Shmuel Huang, Xinyan Fernandez-Pello, Carlos Olson, Sandra Ferkul, Paul |
author_facet | Link, Shmuel Huang, Xinyan Fernandez-Pello, Carlos Olson, Sandra Ferkul, Paul |
author_sort | Link, Shmuel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Fire safety is a concern in space travel, particularly with the current plans of increasing the length of the manned space missions, and of using spacecraft atmospheres different than in Earth, such as microgravity, low-velocity gas flow, low pressure and elevated oxygen concentration. In this work, the spread of flame over a thermoplastic polymer, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), was conducted in the International Space Station and on Earth. The tests consisted of determining the opposed flame spread rate over PMMA cylinders under low-flow velocities ranging from 0.4 to 8 cm/s and oxygen concentrations from 15% to 21%. The data show that as the opposed flow velocity is increased, the flame spread rate first increases, and then decreases, different from that on Earth. The unique data are significant because they have only been predicted theoretically but not been observed experimentally before. Results also show that flame spread in microgravity could be faster and sustained at lower oxygen concentration (17%) than in normal gravity (18%). These findings suggest that under certain environmental conditions there could be a higher fire risk and a more difficult fire suppression in microgravity than on Earth, which would have significant implications for spacecraft fire safety. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5760683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57606832018-01-17 The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders Link, Shmuel Huang, Xinyan Fernandez-Pello, Carlos Olson, Sandra Ferkul, Paul Sci Rep Article Fire safety is a concern in space travel, particularly with the current plans of increasing the length of the manned space missions, and of using spacecraft atmospheres different than in Earth, such as microgravity, low-velocity gas flow, low pressure and elevated oxygen concentration. In this work, the spread of flame over a thermoplastic polymer, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), was conducted in the International Space Station and on Earth. The tests consisted of determining the opposed flame spread rate over PMMA cylinders under low-flow velocities ranging from 0.4 to 8 cm/s and oxygen concentrations from 15% to 21%. The data show that as the opposed flow velocity is increased, the flame spread rate first increases, and then decreases, different from that on Earth. The unique data are significant because they have only been predicted theoretically but not been observed experimentally before. Results also show that flame spread in microgravity could be faster and sustained at lower oxygen concentration (17%) than in normal gravity (18%). These findings suggest that under certain environmental conditions there could be a higher fire risk and a more difficult fire suppression in microgravity than on Earth, which would have significant implications for spacecraft fire safety. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5760683/ /pubmed/29317681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18398-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Link, Shmuel Huang, Xinyan Fernandez-Pello, Carlos Olson, Sandra Ferkul, Paul The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title | The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title_full | The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title_fullStr | The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title_full_unstemmed | The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title_short | The Effect of Gravity on Flame Spread over PMMA Cylinders |
title_sort | effect of gravity on flame spread over pmma cylinders |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5760683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29317681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18398-4 |
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