08-10/07/2014 - AircraftFire Colloquium on the flammability threat of composites on aeronautical fire safety (Belgium)

This colloquium brings together interested people from science (students and researchers from academia and research centres), from industry (engineers, aircraftdesigners, parts manufacturers,...) and professionals from or related to public services, who are working in the field of fire safety in aeronautics.

A two and half days Colloquium focused on:
- Fundamentals and state of the art in fire safety in aeronautics
- New issues for fire safety in aeronautics
- AircraftFire and beyond: Discussion panel on follow-up activities for fire safety in aviation

The Context:

For 20 years, the fire threat in aeronautics has been drastically reduced. But in new generation aircrafts the massive use of flammable composites, substituting metallic structural elements, changes the understanding of fire risk, and influences the fire safety approach for passenger and crew safety and survivability during fire incidents.
As recent contribution the FP7 project AircraftFire (AcF) is aimed at the characterisation of the flammability and burning properties of aeronautical composites for fuselage, wings, structures, fuel tanks, cabin materials and their influences on the mechanical behaviour and at the investigation of the effects on inflight fire growth in the cabin and on passenger evacuation during post-crash fire.

The Objectives:
The first part of the meeting, on July 8th, will provide "Fundamentals and state of the art in fire safety in aeronautics".
Experts from the AircraftFire project will present the main physical phenomena involved in aeronautical fires as well as the experimental and numerical methodologies developed by AircraftFire.

The second part of the meeting, on July 9th and 10th, will be particularly focused on "New issues for fire safety in aeronautics". Areas such as the fire retardants, the mechanical strength of burning composites and ignition by equipment devices are not in the focus of the AircraftFire project. External experts will share their experience to identify the remaining lack of knowledge and understanding in these domains.

Further information:
https://cordis.europa.eu