Experimenting with Fire to Find Safe Materials for Space
Fire behaves very differently in low- and zero-gravity environments. Discovering how the mechanisms of combustion differ in these environments is the goal of San Diego State University mechanical engineers Subrata Bhattacharjee and Fletcher Miller, and it could lead to safer space travel and a more complete understanding of fire on earth. On earth, our atmosphere is about 21-percent oxygen, but engineers can regulate the oxygen aboard spacecraft. High oxygen levels can lead to extremely flammable conditions, as seen in the fatal Apollo 1 disaster. Results from their experiments will help the researchers refine their theories about flame dynamics and help NASA qualify materials as safe for use on spacecraft.
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Transcript
00:00:02 My name is Subrata Bhattacharjee I'm a professor in mechanical engineering and an adjunct professor in the computer scientist depatment I'm Fletcher Miller in the department of mechanical engineering an associate professor there since 2007 we both work on fires My research interest specifically is in fire in space in a micro-gravity environment as in the space station and Fletcher wants to find out about testing method of materials so here at San Diego State state we built a very unique apparatus that
00:00:31 allows us to test materials in a simulated space craft environment we call it a narrow channel it's like a very small wind tunnel and we can recreate spacecraft flow and fluid environments and test how materials burn so we are essentially trying to achieve the same kind of environment here in a unique novel way and understand how fire propagates in space there are four different set-ups one is the flame tower it's a closed steel chamber we can run a sample and make the sample
00:01:06 move up approximately at the same speed as hot air rises creating an environment as if the fire is burning in space then we have the narrow channel and then we have the flame stabilizer and we have the flame tunnel so these are the four major recruitments at San Diego State we use fire on earth is dominated by buoyancy when we investigate a fire in space there's no bouyancy there is no gravity so the fire becomes a little simpler in space to study so we are looking at very small flames and without the complexity of buoyancy you can bring it back to earth
00:01:40 and then put buoyancy on it and we understand fire a lot better so five years from now they're going to show you a formula look this is going to tell you how fire spreads in microgravity