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Large Scale Hydrocarbon Fire Evaluations  
Each burn pit is outfitted with an aircraft mockup to enhance research objectives. The first burn pit, built in the early 1990’s, contains a one-third scale replica of an Air Force C-130 cargo transport plane. The C-130 mockup was designed with the complete fuselage, wings, engine nacelle and tail. Although the real C-130 does not have a tail engine, the mockup was designed with this feature to provide a fire scenario similar what would be experienced in other aircraft, such as the military KC-10 or MD-11. The second burn pit, placed into service in 2003, contains a full-scale replica of a double-deck aircraft. The mockup was designed to encompass the key features of new large aircraft (NLA) such as the Airbus A380 or Boeing 747-8 and will be the cornerstone to the FAA NLA research program. The FAA mockup contains sixty feet of fuselage, which is over 27 feet in height. The mockup also contains the first inboard engine nacelle, ten feet of the leading edge of the wing, emergency evacuation slides and functional passenger and cargo doors. Plans are already underway to design a fixture that would replicate running or spray fuel fires most commonly encountered in engines. The capability to evaluate equipment, agents and techniques on large-scale fires has resulted in many successful research projects including drivers enhanced vision system, ARFF vehicle suspension, small airport firefighting system, high reach extendable turrets, penetrator nozzles, dual agent nozzles, multi-position high flow bumper turrets and fire fighting foam evaluations. Large-scale fire testing gives the FAA the ability to quickly evaluate technologies under realistic conditions and determine the effectiveness for fire fighting applications. By partnering with AFRL, the FAA is able to reduce costs, eliminate redundancy and expedite technology transition to assure that the needs of ARFF firefighters are met.
Contact Project Lead: Keith Bagot, ATO-P (formerly AAR-411) Last Update: 04/17/07 |