Fuel Pool Ignition Caused by a Pyrotechnic Device

Safety protocols on both military and commercial aircraft rely on knowledge of fire dynamics, temperature distributions and thermal mass transfer of specific chemical components. Indeed, the temperature field associated within an incendiary flash has numerous implications, particularly in the aircraft survivability arena. Present knowledge is limited when it comes to determining the local; temperature field around a burning incendiary and although there are full-scale experimental facilities these are often too expensive to perform all the parameters that are necessary to understand this type of event. Furthermore, if a fire has been initiated due to the instigation of a short duration pyrotechnic event then the scenario is further complicated, and is even more so if the event is in close proximity to a pool of fuel. Indeed, the ignition of a fuel pool by an incendiary device, such as a armour-piercing incendiary (API), has not been exhaustively covered, and it is widely accepted that the energy is released uniformly and produces a homogenous high temperature field. This work has shown that not only is the spectral energy released some 5 times greater than that of the actual fireball, but that the pyrotechnic charge has to be within a set distance from the surface of a pool of fuel, for a particular fuel temperature, before a fire may be initiated and sustained.