Development of a Heat Flux Sensor to Predict Skin Burn Injury for the Fingers of the PyroHands(TM) Fire Test System

Firefighters, soldiers, and petrochemical industry workers all run a serious risk of severe burn injury to their hands due to high intensity heat exposures. Serious hand burn injuries are devastating to a person's overall quality of life and impede even the simplest of daily tasks. To prevent these injuries, it is imperative to improve flame resistant glove construction and design. This requires the development of testing methods to provide accurate data on the heat protection afforded by flame resistant gloves.;Previous test methods for analyzing the thermal protective performance of gloves in flash fire conditions were limited to material-level testing. These methods did not address glove construction, layering effects, or how gloves fit on the hands. This led to the development of the PyroHands(TM) Fire Test System; a set of stand-alone manikin hands for testing gloves in simulated flash fire conditions. This test is a departure from the longstanding PyroMan(TM) Fire Test System, which is used for whole garment testing.;Development of the PyroHands(TM) system required the design of heat flux sensors for the hands and fingers. The primary focus of this dissertation is the development of the finger sensors. The finger sensors were designed and modeled using Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) software, then experimentally tested to validate operation. This research demonstrated that the finger sensor measured heat flux similar to the PyroCal(TM) sensors used in PyroMan(TM).;New models were developed to calculate burns injuries to the human hands and fingers. These burn models included specific skin thickness values for the palm, dorsum, wrist, and finger that were found through medical literature. Numerical studies were performed to analyze the effects of cylindrical coordinates for finger burn injury and the effects of adding a layer of bone to the back of the skin. These elements were combined to provide the most anatomically realistic burn injury prediction model for the skin of the hands.;The final component of this research was the validation testing performed using three sets of flame resistant gloves. This test data showed that the PyroHands(TM) (with the finger sensors) were capable of differentiating between glove weights and flame exposure times. These data demonstrated the utility of the PyroHands(TM) system and provide a technical foundation for the use of this system as a standardized test for evaluating the thermal protective performance of flame resistant gloves in flash fire conditions.