Applicability of a Simple Decay Function to Describe Fire‐Protective Fabrics' Aging Behavior

Predicting the effect of aging conditions on materials' performance is a challenging yet critical task. In the case of fire‐protective clothing, premature performance loss may compromise end‐users' safety. Researchers have used accelerated aging to predict protective clothing's expected life. A simple decay function was recently proposed by Wakatsuki et al. to describe the effect of UV aging on the strength of para‐aramid copolymer/meta‐aramid blended fabrics. This article evidences the applicability of this simple model to other fiber blends used in firefighter protective clothing outer shell fabrics and to laminates used as moisture barriers after UV exposure. In both cases, the degradation coefficient provided by the decay function varies linearly with the irradiance. The model also satisfactorily describes the aging kinetics of outer shell fabrics exposed to thermal and hydrothermal aging. The outer shell fabrics exposed to thermal aging and the moisture barriers exposed to UV aging show a transition in the aging behavior as a function of the aging temperature. This simple decay function offers a mean to quantitatively analyze and contrast the aging behavior of various fire‐protective fabrics under a wide range of aging conditions and gain new perspectives compared to the traditional Arrhenius model.