A Database of Static Thermal Insulation and Evaporative Resistance Values of Dutch Firefighter Clothing Items and Ensembles

The rescue operations' environment can impair firefighters' performance and increase the risk of injuries, e.g., burns and hyperthermia. The bulk and carried weight of heavy protection contributes to lower physical performance, higher metabolic load and internal body heat production. For r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2022-12, Vol.11 (12), p.1813
Main Authors: Kuklane, Kalev, Eggeling, Jakob, Kemmeren, Maurice, Heus, Ronald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calibration
clothing area factor
clothing system
Engineering and Technology
Environmental conditions
firefighter
Firefighters
Harsh environments
Heat
Heat transfer
Hyperthermia
Insulation
local and regional evaporative resistance
local and regional thermal insulation
Maskinteknik
Mechanical Engineering
modelling
Occupational exposure
Physiology
Prediction models
Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics
Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi
Protective clothing
Sensors
station wear
Teknik
Temperature
turnout gear
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Summary:The rescue operations' environment can impair firefighters' performance and increase the risk of injuries, e.g., burns and hyperthermia. The bulk and carried weight of heavy protection contributes to lower physical performance, higher metabolic load and internal body heat production. For recommending optimal protection for the tasks and incident scenarios, knowledge of clothing thermal properties is needed. However, detailed data on firefighter protective clothing systems are not available. The aim of the study was to provide scientific background and a dataset that would allow for validation of thermo-physiological models for task-specific conditions of rescue work. Thermal insulation of 37 single items and their variations and 25 realistic protective clothing ensembles were measured on a thermal manikin. Twelve (12) ensembles that evenly covered the whole insulation range were selected for evaporative resistance testing. The equations for summing up individual item's insulation to ensemble insulation and calculating clothing area factor were derived from the dataset. The database of a firefighter clothing system was created. In addition, the local and regional thermal properties of the clothing ensembles were provided for use in future validation of advanced thermo-physiological models for rescue worker exposure predictions and for designing decision aid tools.
ISSN:2079-7737
2079-7737
DOI:10.3390/biology11121813