Abstract: Thermal protective performance is an important function of personal protective clothing. As the worldwide accepted special instrument to quantitatively evaluate the flame retardant property of protective equipment, flame manikin plays an important role in clothing thermal protection research. By reviewing the research achievement both at home and abroad, this paper introduced the work principle of flame manikin, the flame manikin development history as well as the characteristic and innovation of Donghua flame testing manikin,investigated the application progress of flame manikin in clothing thermal protection research mainly from four aspects ,that is, the simulation of different fire conditions, evaluation and selection of flame retardant fabric, the effect of garment style and structure on thermal protective performance , the heat transfer mechanism research on flame retardant protective clothing. The application prospect of flame manikin was analyzed and predicted at last.

Key words: flame manikin, Donghua flame testing manikin, thermal protection research, protective clothing