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The influence of pressure on combustible and toxic properties of materials
Author(s) -
Trzeszczyński Jerzy,
Wlodarczak Daniela,
Bójko Teresa
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
fire and materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-1018
pISSN - 0308-0501
DOI - 10.1002/fam.810110305
Subject(s) - smoke , fire hazard , hazard , forensic engineering , combustibility , active fire protection , environmental science , waste management , material selection , fire prevention , fire protection , crew , engineering , architectural engineering , materials science , civil engineering , combustion , aeronautics , environmental protection , composite material , chemistry , organic chemistry
Combustible and toxic properties greatly influence the application of materials in shipbuilding. These materials, especially plastics, create a serious toxic hazard during fire. Under fire conditions they decompose thermally, giving off considerable amounts of smoke and volatile toxic substances which cause a serious hazard to people overcome by fire inside a compartment. 1–3 Lethal poisoning by the thermal degradation products of plastics has attracted the attention of many investigators to toxic hazards during a fire. 1,4 Underwater systems create, in particular, a serious fire hazard. Fire in a decompression chamber spreads in a different way to land fires and usually causes the death of the crew and complete destruction of equipment in the chamber. Theoretically, complete fire protection in a chamber could be achieved by the total elemination of combustible materials and their replacement by incombustible ones. However, from a practical point of view this is impossible. The general principles of materials selection used in underwater systems are defined by Det Norske Veritas. 5 Unfortunately, these do not describe the methods of testing materials nor the criteria of materials selection. There is also a lack of information in the literature on toxic hazards under elevated pressures. This problem has been studied in detail with oxygen‐enriched atmospheres in aerospace programmes, 6 but because those studies are classified there is only fragmentary information in the literature.