Laboratory Fire Testing of Cabin Materials Used in Commercial Aircraft

The purpose of this paper is to familiarize individuals with the kinds of materials currently used in the cabin interior of a commercial airliner, to describe some of the more important fire tests used to evaluate these materials, and to summarize the behavior of these cabin materials when subjected to each of the fire test methods. Specifically, a detailed description is presented of the following respective test methods for flammability, smoke, and toxic gas emissions: vertical Bunsen burner test. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) smoke chamber, and a combustion tube furnace test. Fire test data on 75 cabin materials are summarized for burn length, flame-out time, specific optical density (D//s) of smoke, and yields of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and carbon monoxide (CO).