Modeling of heat transfer through multilayer firefighter protective clothing

This paper is the first in a series of studies on optimizing the performance of firefighter clothing, in respect of thermal comfort and skin protection from thermal injury that results from exposure to low-intensity thermal radiation. This paper focuses on the development of a heat transfer model suitable for predicting the temperature and heat flux in firefighter protective clothing exposed to low-intensity thermal radiation. The finite element method was used to evaluate the heat transfer by means of the Comsol Multiphysics (R) package. The model results were compared to experimental results for the case typical of routine conditions with a commonly used three-layer protective clothing assembly. Model predictions of the temperature agreed well with experimental temperature. This model could be used as an aid in the design of candidate protective clothing systems, by evaluating the performance of protective clothing systems in various thermal environments.