Temperature Analysis for the Prediction of Steam Formation and Transfer in Multilayer Thermal Protective Clothing at Low Level Thermal Radiation

Abstract

It is important to understand the process of evaporation and steam transfer through firefighter protective clothing in order to be able to prevent steam burns. As humidity sensors are too slow to measure fast changes of humidity inside the clothing layers, temperature changes were used to analyze the evaporation of moisture. Temperature measurements turned out to be useful to predict the evaporation speed within the clothing layers, as temperatures remain constant during the evaporation. The measurements showed that the temperatures within the clothing layers containing a wet layer never rose higher than the temperatures within dry clothing. As soon as all moisture had evaporated, temperature increase followed exactly the curves of the measurements of dry samples.