Design and Development of a Test Method for Analyzing Protective Performance of Gloves Exposed to Radiant Heat Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis

ABSTRACT

Gloves are one of the most important items in the protective ensemble as they protect hand which is the most frequently burned body part. At present, no international standard or standardized test method is available for analyzing thermal protective performance of gloves exposed to purely radiant heat exposures. In the present work, a systematic approach for developing test setup for radiant heat exposure is proposed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A coupled CFD–radiation heat transfer model is first developed and validated with available experimental data. Effects of horizontal and vertical orientations of radiant heaters are then analyzed. Based on this study, an optimized configuration of the experimental setup which results in uniform heat flux distribution throughout the hand under lower level of radiant heat exposure is proposed. Furthermore, effects of different heater temperatures on heat flux distribution are studied. It is found that the proposed configuration works satisfactorily for other higher and lower heat flux levels as well.

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Notes on contributors

Udayraj

Udayraj is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in the field of Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and 2012, respectively. His current research field is heat transfer through thermal protective clothing.

Prabal Talukdar

Prabal Talukdar is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He has worked with the Institute of Fluid Mechanics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, as a postdoctoral fellow. His research areas are radiative heat transfer, heat and mass transfer in porous media, convective drying, heat transfer through thermal protective fabric. He has authored more than 125 international journal and conference papers.

Apurba Das

Apurba Das is a professor in the Department of Textile Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 1994. He has joined IIT Delhi in 2002 as a faculty after working in the textile industries and in research organizations for about 11 years. He has published more than 180 research papers in journals and conferences, authored and edited books and written chapters in several books. His areas of research interest are clothing comfort, nonwovens and technical textiles, filter fabrics, geotextiles, medical bandage, textile composites, electromagnetic shielding textile materials, and evaluation of textile materials.

Ramasamy Alagirusamy

Ramasamy Alagirusamy is a professor in the Department of Textile Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his Ph.D. degree from Georgia Tech, USA in 1994. He has published more than 100 research papers in journals and conferences. He has edited/authored 5 books and authored 8 book chapters. His research interests includes hybrid yarns for thermoplastic composites, textile preforming for composites, natural fiber composites, clothing comfort, and yarn engineering.