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The Development of a Thermally Enhanced Emergency Fire ShelterSince its founding in 1905, the U.S. Forest Service has been responsible for maintaining public lands. The Forest Service and other public lands agencies respond to an average of 73,000 wildfires per year, and responding firefighters are required to carry a number of safety gear items, including the M2002 emergency fire shelter. The emergency fire shelter is intended to serve as a last resort means of protection in case a firefighter's escape route has been compromised in the face of an approaching flame front. No fire shelter deployment tragedy has been more costly than the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona, where 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots perished. After the tragedy at Yarnell Hill, the Forest Service decided to expedite the next redesign cycle of the fire shelter in order to improve its ability to withstand direct contact with flames. Engineers at NASA Langley Research Center have spent the better part of a decade developing flexible thermal materials for use in inflatable aerodynamic decelerators and have demonstrated their performance in the IRVE-2 and IRVE-3 flight programs (Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment). NASA engineers recognized an opportunity to leverage their experience and knowledge with flexible thermal protection systems to potentially improve the fire shelter's resistance to direct flame contact, and have been working directly with the U.S. Forest Service to achieve this goal. They launched the CHIEFS project (Convective Heating Improvement for Emergency Fire Shelters) in 2014. Over the past three years, CHIEFS has screened over 270 unique material layups, and tested over 30 unique full scale shelter concepts in an effort to achieve a game changing improvement to the thermal protection of the fire shelter, while maintaining minimal mass and volume. This paper will discuss CHIEFS' 1st and 2nd generation fire shelter development efforts and test results.
Document ID
20170007490
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Fody, Joshua M. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Calomino, Anthony M. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Daryabeigi, Kamran (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Bruce III, Walter E. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Wells, John M. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Wusk, Mary E. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Miller, Stephen D. (Miller (S. D.) and Associates Flagstaff, AZ, United States)
Date Acquired
August 9, 2017
Publication Date
July 16, 2017
Subject Category
Engineering (General)
Report/Patent Number
NF1676L-27096
Meeting Information
Meeting: International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES) 2017
Location: Charleston, SC
Country: United States
Start Date: July 16, 2017
End Date: July 20, 2017
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Funding Number(s)
WBS: WBS 470883.04.07.02.02
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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