Abstract:

To improve thermal protection of fabrics used in firefighter’s protective clothing embedded with shape memory alloy, fabric combinations with 3 deformation heights of shape memory alloy (SMA) spring and 3 different arrangement modes were developed to analyze the influence of the size of SMA. The protective performance of these fabric combinations were tested by hot surface contact and thermal radiation tests. The results indicated that the SMA could effectively improve the protective performance of fabric combinations, and the height of SMA spring influences the air gap distribution, thus determined the heat insulating property. Moreover, the impact of deformation height of SMA spring is influenced by the arrangement mode, which could be related with the air gap shape and distribution caused by the SMA springs. Finally, the thermal protection of fabrics with different arrangement mode also show different trends under the two thermal hazards, i.e., under both thermal hazards, the fabrics with no-cut SMA springs in the arrangement of one and three diag provided better performance than those with cut SMA springs, whereas the protection of fabrics with no-cut and cut SMA springs exhibited different change trend as the SMA springs are in two diag arrangement mode.

Key words: firefighers' protective clothing, protective property, shape memory alloy spring, air layer, arangement mode