Safety Evaluation of Emulsified Fuels
Abstract
A comprehensive test program was conducted to establish emulsified fuel screening test procedures, to obtain safety evaluation criteria, and to evaluate the safety performance of emulsified and gelled aviation fuels in a simulated full-scale crash environment. A series of screening tests was formulated and conducted to obtain fuel characteristics as a function of hot- surface ignition, wind shear, and impact dynamics associated with fuel breakup, atomization/dispersion, and ignition. The data obtained from these screening tests were used to establish emulsified fuel safety evaluation criteria. A simulated full-scale experiment was designed to simulate the full-scale helicopter crash environment adequately and, in addition, to be reproducibly controllable at minimal cost. The screening tests revealed that, for the emulsified fuels tested, safety was directly dependent upon the fuel yield stress and its internal phase base fuel. The data obtained from the simulated full-scale tests provided definition of a nonhazardous limiting value for the ignition susceptibility parameter. Further, tests were performed on gelled fuels to offer a comparison between the safety of emulsified and gelled fuels. Three of the emulsified fuels tested were found to result in a nonhazardous postcrash fire: EF8R-104H emulsion, EF8R-104 emulsion, and Jet-A EXP-4 emulsion. The gelled fuels did not perform as well as the emulsified fuels; however, one gel, Jet-A gel no. 1, indicated a sizeable advantage over liquid fuels. In summary, the results of this program confirmed that aircraft fuel emulsions can be formulated which are nonhazardous within the helicopter survivable crash limit envelope.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1971
- Accession Number
- AD0729330
Entities
People
- Leslie M. Shaw