Laboratory Modeling of Garment Fires1

Abstract

In an attempt to model real-life burn accidents, garment assemblies were burned on adult-size mannequins and the temperature distribution over the mannequin surface determined. Anaesthetized, shaved rats were exposed in openings of the mannequinns in the spatial arrangements encountered in real-life garment fires. The correlation between the depth of burn into the skin and the temperature observed on the mannequin surface near the exposed skin seemed fair. In other experiments, the interaction of burning fabrics and depth of burn was studied by means of simulated garments fitted to anaesthetized, shaved rats.