Every year hundreds of firefighters are injured as a result of exposure to fire. Measurements have indicated that the heat flux from a flashover is primarily due to radiation, being less than 30% convective heat. Thus, thermal protective clothing with excellent thermal radiation reflective performance has been of great interest. As is known, reflective surfaces are effective in providing radiant heat protection. The surface temperature of fabrics exposed to radiation are reported to be reduced to about one-half in still air by the use of aluminized surfaces with 90% reflectivity, and considerably more in moving air. In recent years, many studies have been performed on the protective clothing especially protective clothing against heat and fire. This textiles have many applications including furnaces and firefight protection. This work, is an investigation on protective clothing against heat radiation at high temperature. A device was made according to ASTM F1939-99a. This apparatus is consist of a heat source, sample holder and a thermal radiant flux sensor. The heat source is a series of 5 quartz lamps. In order to carry out the experiment, at first the thermal radiant flux of the lamps, without sample in front is measured. The sample is then placed in front of heat source and the transmitted heat radiant is then measured. The relative thermal radiant protective index of the sample can be calculated. Three type of glass fabrics with different thicknesses were tested. The glass fabrics were coated with an aluminium foil. Three different thicknesses of aluminium foil were tested. The result showed that the thickness of glass fabrics has significant effect on the thermal protection of samples. The thermal radiation transmission decreases with increasing thickness of glass fabrics. Aluminized fabrics showed a very high reduction in thermal radiation transmission. However, the thickness of aluminium foil showed no significant effect on the thermal protective value Keywords: Heat radiation, radiation protection, Radiant flux sensor, Aluminized fabrics
