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Convective heat test (EN 9151)

By 10 December, 2020June 30th, 2023Events, News

Convective heat test (EN 9151):

In previous posts, we’ve spoken about how we know if a fabric is “flame resistant” and valid to be used as PPE. We began explaining the horizontal flame test (EN 15025 – A1), but as you will imagine, there are much other tests involved to make such affirmation.  

The regulation EN 11612, when speaking about protection against heat and flames, it basically measures 3 kind of different heat transmission:

  • Contact (EN 12127)
  • Radiant (EN 6942)
  • Convective (EN 9151)

In this post we will focus on the EN 9151. 

How can we quantify the resistance of a fabric against convective heat?

The test consists to put a fabric sample (in case of a “sandwich” of fabrics, the order of the layers is as it would be in a real garment) to an incident heat flux of 80 kW/m2 ± 5%. 

The heat passing through the sample is measured by a calorimeter located above the fabric and in contact with it.

A rise of 24ºC ± 0.2ºC is considered to be a 2nd degree burn on human skin, so indeed, the test measures the time needed to do this increment.

The results are split in 3 levels:
a) B1: from 4 to <10 seconds
b) B2: from 10 to <20 seconds
c) B3: up to 20 seconds or more

To say that the test has been successful, the result shall be at least B1.

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