Design and Development of Fire Retardant Test Rig for Evaluating Fire Protection Intumescent Coatings
摘要
Thermal intumescent coatings are basically used to shield a surface against transfer of heat. These coatings are used to avoid the detrimental effect on the life of the aircraft structure. Hence, the thermal intumescent coatings are required to be certified to use in the aircraft. The hot gases with the pre-defined heat flux, mass flow rate, and temperature conditions are impinged on the coating specimen. To simulate the air mass flow rate and temperature of hot gas, a gas generator test rig is developed using a propane gas burner. The burner requires minimum air mass flow rate and fuel mass flow rate to reach the required heat flux conditions. The burner is ignited using in-house developed kero-ignition system instead of spark plug. The air mass flow rate and fuel flow rate are controlled using servo actuated valve. The valves are controlled using the Arduino-based microcontroller working on the PWM technique. To evaluate the thermal intumescent property of the coating, the temperature at the front and back side of the coating are measured using K-type thermocouples. The mass flow rates are measured using Coriolis flow meters and flow pressures are measured using pressure sensors. All the measurements are carried out using in-house developed measurement system in the LabVIEW software with National Instrument DAS. The sample of the coating is exposed to the hot gas continuously for 15 min. The temporal variation of the temperatures and heat flux values are displayed and recorded. All other parameters like heat flux, pressure, mass flow rate and temperatures are continuously monitored using online monitoring program.