TY - JOUR TI - Experimental study on moisture transfer through firefighters' protective fabrics in radiant heat exposures AU - Chen Meng AU - Zhu Fanglong AU - Feng Qianqian AU - Li Kejing AU - Liu Rangtong JN - Thermal Science PY - 2017 VL - 21 IS - 4 SP - 1665 EP - 1671 PT - Article AB - The effects of absorbed moisture on thermal protective performance of firefighters' clothing materials under radiant heat flux conditions were analyzed in this paper. A thermal protective performance tester and temperature sensor were used to measure the temperature variations for the facecloth side of four kinds of commonly used flame retardant fabrics in several radiant heat exposures, which varied in moisture content. Experimental results showed that, all of the temperature profiles of these four kinds of moistened fabrics under different radiant heat flux conditions presented the same variation trend. The addition of moisture had a positive influence on the thermal protective performance during the constant temperature period when heat radiation time was more than 60s. As the heat radiation time increased beyond 500s, the thermal protective performance of moistened fabrics became worse than that of dried fabrics in general.