Fire behaviour of composite materials using kerosene burner tests at small-scales

In order to study fire behavior of composites used in the aeronautic field, a kerosene-flame burner has been designed and built allowing to thermally stress one side of small samples with a flame, reproducing the scenario of an engine fire. The burner has been optimized to obtain the same conditions as in standard tests, flame temperature of 1100 °C and heat flux of 116 kW/m2. During the tests, the temperature of the rear face is measured with an infrared camera, and the mass loss with a weighting cell. An original method has been developed in order to determine the convective coefficient of the flame on the composite samples as well as the contribution of the radiative part of the total heat flux. It uses the thermal balance of a thin steel plate heated by the flame. The bench test was used to analyze the fire behavior of two carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, a first one with thermosetting matrix (epoxy 8552) and a second with a thermoplastic matrix (polyphenylene sulfide). The results are shown and analyzed. The comparison will highlight the differences observed in terms of behaviour of composites exposed to a kerosene flame.