Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The minimum thickness of a foam blanket necessary to seal the surface of a petrol fire has been determined for a range of foam properties. It is shown that stiff foams, such as are often produced by aircraft crash tenders, when applied to the surface of burning petrol produce a blanket several times thicker than is necessary to seal the surfaces. This suggests that an investigation of the techniques of applying foam to aircraft crash fires could be usefully directed towards methods of obtaining a coherent blanket nearer to the critical thickness.