Susan S. Xu

Department of Occupational Safety and Health, National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Publications

• Research Article   
  Modeling and Analyzing for Thermal Protection of Firefighters' Glove by Phase Change Material
  Author(s): Susan S. Xu*, Jonisha Pollard and Weihuan Zhao
  
  Firefighter injures caused by burns and thermal stress occupies around 5%-10% of the total injuries annually. Glove is the thinnest/weakest components among the firefighter turnout gear, which can put firefighters, are at risk of severe wrist and hand burns during fire calls. Burns can occur quickly and enhancing the thermal protective performance of firefighters’ gloves will prevent these burns. One-dimensional (1D) heat transfer modeling and simulations were performed through the COMSOL Multiphysics software to investigate the improvement of thermal protective performance when integrating a Phase Change Material (PCM) layer into a conventional structural firefighting glove. Parametric studies were conducted to explore the effects of PCM thermal properties, layer thickness, and location in glove structure on hand protection. It was found that a PCM with a higher density, specif.. Read More»
  

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