Consortium develops program to train firefighters in safe and effective methods for combating composite materials fires.

AFRL scientists and engineers, working cooperatively with experts from academia and the firefighting community, have developed a Composite Material Fire Safety training program designed to improve the safety and effectiveness of Air Force, Department of Defense (DoD), and civilian firefighters. The team created the program to educate firefighters on the methodologies they need to rapidly and safely extinguish composite materials fires.

Composite materials are a physical combination of two or more materials, generally consisting of a reinforcement material and a “binder,” or matrix, material. The reinforcements, or loadbearing elements, are usually fibers; a resin binder serves to hold the fibers and fill the voids. The reinforced matrix structure thereby enables fiberto- fiber stress transfer. Manufacturers create composite materials from several laminate layers with varying fiber orientations. In many cases, they also sandwich a honeycomb-like core material between these laminate layers. Composite materials are extremely common in aerospace applications (see Figure 1) where a high strength-toweight ratio is a necessity. Composites are not only prevalent in the aviation industry, but are also present in a broad range of commercial products, since designers can tailor their characteristics to customize component performance.

Emerging fire safety issues related to composite materials prompted creation of the Composite Fire Safety Initiative, a program dedicated to building awareness of composite materials combustion processes and providing firefighters with the methodologies and technologies needed for safely extinguishing composite materials fires. At the 2002 Composite Fire Safety Initiative meeting in Washington DC, fire safety experts discussed the increased use of composites in DoD and civilian technologies. One key discussion addressed the need to provide firefighters with proper support and training.