aircraft cargo fire.pdfVIP

Philippe MANGON CERBERUS S.A, BUC, France FIRE DETECTION FOR AIRCRAFT CARGO COMPARTMENTS , REDUCTION OF FALSE ALARMS Abstract In order to better understand the reasons for the current high false fire alarm ratio in Aeronautic Applications, an analysis of actual fire and false alarm events has been conducted using different database. This research (funded by the European Commission within the 5th Framework Programme FireDetEx) included the following analysis : 1. Analysis of false alarm cases A review of false fire alarm cases extracted from different data bases will be presented, For some typical cases, it will be analysed whether the alarm was triggered by a system malfunction, particular environmental conditions or by the detection of aerosol particles. 2. Analysis of fire alarm cases Real fire alarm cases will also be considered, it will be determined what was the probable fire source, which phenomena has likely caused the ignition and what should have been the best fire sensor under these conditions. 3. Definition of fire and non-fire scenario The fire detection system can only be improved on the basis of clear performance objectives, fire and non-fire scenario will be presented against which the performance of new fire detection concept can be measured and evaluated. Introduction Among the various aircraft zones for which a fire protection is required, the cargo compartments are specific in this sense that their characteristics are very variable in terms of dimensions and topologies as well as environmental conditions and fire threats. Fire sources and their combustion mechanisms and products are diversified, therefore there is no single physical parameter that would allow the detection of this wide fire spectrum with an evenly distributed sensitivity. Under these conditions, in the currently used systems, the smoke detectors have to be adjusted so as to early detect the fire type for which their sen