Solid combustion research in microgravity as a basis of fire safety in space

This paper introduces fire safety standards for flammability evaluation of solid material intended for use in a spacecraft habitat. Two types of existing standards include material evaluation by pass/fail criteria corresponding to Test 1 of NASA STD 6001B and evaluation by a flammability index such as maximum oxygen concentration (MOC) corresponding to the improved Test 1. The advantage of the latter is the wide applicability of the MOC index to different atmospheres in spacecraft. Additionally, the limiting oxygen index (LOI) method is introduced as a potential alternative index for the evaluation using the improved Test 1 method. When criteria based on an index such as MOC or LOI are applied for material screening, the discrepancy of the index to the actual flammability limit in microgravity such as minimum limiting oxygen concentration (MLOC) is essential information for guaranteeing fire safety in space because material flammability can be higher in microgravity. In this paper, the existing research on the effects of significant parameters on material flammability in microgravity are introduced, and the difference between the limiting value in microgravity and the indices given by the standard test methods on the ground is discussed. Finally, on-going efforts to develop estimation methods of material flammability in microgravity according to normal gravity tests are summarized.