Investigation and correlation of manikin and bench-scale fire testing of clothing systems

The US Army currently has five flame/thermal protective clothing systems to provide protection for soldiers against fire hazards. The protective performance of these clothing systems against burn injuries was investigated in full-scale manikin tests. The protective performance of fabric layers of these clothing systems was also examined in bench-scale tests. In addition, air gap thicknesses and distributions of the five clothing systems were determined by using a three-dimensional laser scanning technique. In this paper, test conditions of the manikin and bench-scale tests are compared, and the test results are correlated in light of the air gap measurements. The behavior of individual sensors on the manikin with similar test conditions to those of bench-scale tests are compared with the bench-scale tests. It is found that if the air gap distribution of a clothing system is known, bench-scale tests could provide useful information for full-scale performance, especially bench-scale tests with zero air gap measurements. Published in 2002 by John Wiley Sons, Ltd.