Development of a fire detection and suppression system for a smart air cargo container

ABSTRACTThis study investigates and proposes a fire detection and suppression system for a smart air cargo container. A series of smoke spread and fire evolution numerical models are executed to assess the performance of container-based fire detection in various fire scenarios. This is to identify the worst case and optimise the location and threshold setting of fire detection sensors, achieving the shortest detection time. It is found that the fire detection threshold (reduction in light transmission = 12%/ft) for a container-based system can be set at three times the standard activation threshold for a cargo-based fire detection system, which can reduce the number of false alarms by three orders of magnitude. Moreover, effectiveness analysis of passive fire protection for the glass fibre-reinforced polymer-made smart container indicates an allowable leakage size of 0.01m2. The risk of internal overpressure has been found to be negligible for the leakage size required by aircraft pressure equalisation.

Vehicle’s components damage potentials of liquid cargo

The failure of vehicle’s suspension components has contributed to road crashes, while their defective operation can deteriorate the fuel efficiency of the vehicles. In this context, and when compared with solid cargo transporters, the road tankers would tend to produce larger roll forces during turning, as the curved shape of the liquid cargo container, shifts upwards the centre of gravity of the cargo. With reference to a rectangular cargo container representing the solid cargo situation, the increase in the position due to elliptical and circular tank shapes, can attain a value of 17% (100% fill, circular tank). In this study, experimental results comparing the lateral load transfer due to solid and liquid cargoes, indicate that the average force increase on the vehicle’s load-receiver side due to a liquid cargo, is 4.3%. To analyse the full-scale situation of both situations, that is, the higher position of the centre of gravity and the shifting of the liquid cargo, a simplified model is developed. The outputs from such a model when subjected to realistic operating conditions (speed and turning radius), suggest that the higher position of the centre of gravity due to using a non-rectangular cargo container generates an average force increase of 4.9% on the side receiving the load transfer. The incorporation of the effect of the liquid cargo, through the simple pendulum analogy, suggests that such an average increases to 6.76%, with a maximum of 8.35% in the case of the elliptical tank at 75% fill level. It is found that the average liquid cargo effect is 5.44%, which should be compared with the 4.3% of the experiments. Road tankers components would thus have a relatively shorter load cycle life than those of the solid cargo trucks.