Design of a functional protective clothing and thermal performance evaluation

Firefighter clothing is thermal protective clothing with a multi-layered structure of outer layer, moisture barrier and thermal liner. The firefighter protective clothing should be resistant to high temperature and flame. It should be waterimpermeable but should be capable of sweat to the outside. It is important to have an ergonomic feature and it's necessary to protect against mechanical hazards such as tensile and tear. The effectiveness of this protection depends on the nature of each layer and on the design of the protective clothing; so it depends on the functionality of the clothing. Nowadays, studies are performed about the development of protective clothing which has an "interactive" and "smart" structure because of interacting with the user. However, the inadequacy of multidisciplinary studies, the difficulty of providing smart electronic equipment, and the high cost of production make it difficult to develop smart protective clothing. A protective and functional firefighter jacket which is resistant to heat and flame with optimum cost was designed and produced in this work. Various physical and thermal performance tests were applied to each single layer fabric and to the three-layered fabrics. An electronic system was designed and integrated to the prototype jacket with the support of lecturers at Department of Electrical-Electronics Engineering and Department of Mechatronics in Dokuz Eylül University. The functional firefighter jacket prototype has also gained a smart feature with the integrated electronic system.