A New Tool for Effective Burn Injury Prediction and Evaluation of Personal Protective Clothing Fabrics

An apparatus for small scale evaluation of burn hazard protection provided by fabrics intended for use in personal protective clothing has been developed as a commercially available product with a focus on the needs of researchers, procurement offices and quality control laboratories. It provides the unique ability, for a small scale test to include the important aspects of air gap and fit that had previously only been available in full scale instrumented manikin testing. The apparatus uses a closed-loop controlled IR radiant heat source that generates heat loads up to 100 kW/m(2) at the fabric surface. By additionally using an automated shutter, by having an adjustable fabric specimen holder, a heat flux gage and skin simulant sensor, and a data acquisition system with burn injury algorithms, we have extended the industry's ability to quickly evaluate quality and improvements in protective clothing.