A Firefighter helmet plays an important role to protect the firefighter’s head from falling object, falls from a height and heat and flame from fire and heated smoke within a structure. A Japanese firefighter helmet is very light and comfort during their operation relative to Europe and North-America, but has problem in heat resistance of shock absorption material such as polystyrene foam because it is polymeric. Therefore, protection of polystyrene foam from heat has very important role in terms of both skin burns on head and shock protection by object and fall.
The objective of this paper is to build up the test instrument on firefighter helmet against heat, investigate the thermal resistance on current Japanese firefighter helmet. Then, a method by covering the polystyrene foam by cellulose fiber wipes was proposed and investigated its performance by number of layers of the wipes.
It has been found that both installation of cellulose fiber wipes between helmet shell and polystyrene foam has insulated heat to polystyrene foam and absorption of water by the cellulose fiber wipes which released from aluminum hydrate as fire retardant for firefighter helmet shell made time delay to increase the temperature and maintain the performance of heat insulation. It is expected that this installation of wipes has great effect to maintain shock absorption even if the helmet is exposed to heat and flame for firefighter working environment.
