FLAMMABILIT Y T ESTING
“If I say to someone: here’s the minimum level of
performance that you need to meet and if you can come
up with a novel way of doing that, then more power to
you,” Morgan says. “Say if someone comes up with an allelectric
aircraft, for example, where you take away the
risks of a fuel fire scenario following a crash, your fire
requirements would greatly change. But you still need
to give people X amount of time to escape.”
For the majority of current aircraft operations,
however, prescribed standards and testing protocols
can still be beneficial.
“In principle, if an organisation can’t go through all
the extensive testing, then prescriptive regulation really
matters. For the majority of the real-world stuff that they
might run up against, manufacturers
and suppliers are going to struggle
with performance-based
regulation, and they will be
forced to just pick arbitrary
performance ratings based upon
opinion,” Morgan says. “What is
a good enough level of fire
safety? In my experience, these
aircraftinteriorsinternational.com
052 NOVEMBER 2019
In their letter to the FAA, ICCAIA
representatives suggest that
changing the rules will require
greater deliberation.
THE ROAD TO
REGULATION
“The final regulation, including guidance material and test methods, will need
to be robust. Currently the following test methods being developed by the FAA
Technical Centre are still in the developmental phase (Test Method to Determine
Heat Release Rate and Total Heat Release of Aircraft Cabin Materials; Vertical
Flame Propagation Test Method for Composite Structure, Ducting, and Wire
Insulation) and need to be validated to finalise the test procedure and define
pass/fail requirements. Both of these test method development projects are
implementing new aspects including radiant heat sources and heat flux
measurement procedures, and require subsequent round-robin testing to
ensure the new apparatus is repeatable and reproducible across test labs.”
While they are suggesting an additional 90-day comment period for a more
thorough assessment of the NPRM, they also suggest adding the NPRM to
discussions at the Triennial Cabin Safety conference, scheduled for the last
week of October, and to the March Materials Fire Test Forum meeting.
“ I would rather see the FAA
eliminate redundant or
ineffective testing”
companies don’t have dedicated fire-safety engineers
or materials experts to help them determine what those
levels might be.”
Morgan believes the focus should be a review of tests
to weed-out redundancy. “If they really want regulatory
reform, then the best approach is to look at prescriptive
tests and determine if they are really meaningful. Is there
a better way to test for the same thing?”
He adds, “If a vendor wants to combine materials,
In its efforts to improve regulatory process, regulators
“Regulatory reform is part of that overall broad brush
The FAA declined to offer a fire-testing expert to
Visit the
Videos section of
our website to see
how a seat oil
burner test
works
are there more reliable ways to test the impact of those
combinations? I would rather see the FAA eliminate
redundant or ineffective testing, finding a cheaper,
faster, and reliable predictive model test.”
should not toss the baby out with the bathwater. That
includes the work of the FAA’s independent Materials
Fire Test Facility, which conducts the type of research
that OEMs may not be able to duplicate in-house.
that is applied to cost-savings, but regulatory reformers
should not want to get rid of FAA research,” Morgan says.
comment for this story, saying it would be inappropriate
to do so during an open NPRM review.
LEFT: SAMPLES
AWAITING
FLAMMABILITY
TESTING AT
SKANDIA’S
LABORATORIES
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