Thermal analysis of firefighter jacket embedded with micro encapsulated phase changing material

This article reports the thermal analysis of a firefighter jacket with and without embedding Phase Change Material in it. The Phase Change Material was applied in two different ways (configurations) and the results were compared with respect to the highest temperature attained by the basal layer. Many authors researched using phase change materials in firefighter’s jackets to improve the thermal protection of a jacket. But in some cases, there is a chance of leakage of phase change material (PCM). To overcome this issue, the phase change material is encapsulated by coating another material over it, which acts as a shell. This encapsulation is known as a microencapsulated phase change material. The analysis is performed on the jacket-skin layers along with microencapsulated phase change material. Sudden external heat flux is applied to the jacket. In this paper, thermal analysis was performed with low-intensity heat flux (5 kW.m⁻²), medium intensity heat flux (12 kW.m⁻²), and high-intensity heat flux (84 kW.m⁻²) for 1200 s, 600 s, and 60 s. Firstly, thermal analysis was performed on three different jacket configurations. They are firefighter jackets with No PCM, with PCM, and with microencapsulated phase change material (MEPCM). A firefighter jacket with MEPCM gives better thermal performance compared to other configurations. Later, thermal analysis was performed with two different MEPCMs with different mass ratios respectively. From the results, MEPCM1 is suitable for low-intensity high exposure time and high-intensity low exposure time. MEPCM2 is suitable for low-intensity low exposure time.