Explosion-Containing Fabric for Commercial Planes

Explosion-Containing Fabric for Commercial Planes

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

The subject of explosives on commercial airplanes is one of the main concerns for security personnel of flight companies and authorities around the world. As we reach the airport, each and every one of us undergoes a thorough security check which includes inquiry and an examination of our personal luggage. The reason for this is that in the change of an explosive making its way to the body of the plane and exploding midflight, the chances for the flight’s passengers to survive are not great, to say the least. Despite the major security threat and the awareness of it by security staff, we still do hear every now and again of instances where explosives were successfully boarded on a plane, right past security check. Sometimes it’s only a drill, but sometimes it’s not.

To cope with these single cases when a person manages to get past security and board the plane with a bomb, an international team of scientists from Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the University of Sheffield has developed a special lining called Fly-Bag, which is to be installed on the inside of the airplane’s luggage hold and can absorb the blast completely. That way, the body of the plane remains undamaged and the passengers’ lives will be saved. The special lining has successfully passed several experiments recently conducted inside the luggage hold of Boeing 747 and Airbus 321 airplanes. The Fly-Bag is made of a combination of special fabrics which are highly resistant, especially to the explosion and heat wave created by it. One of the fibers being used for this resistance is Aramid, which is a central component of ballistic body armors.

The advantage of this special fabric against the alternatives meant to contain explosions is that this a highly flexible fabric which absorbs with relative ease the blast from the explosions, as opposed to the stiffness of hard steel doors. Furthermore, the Fly-Bag is light-weight as opposed to harder materials, as well as cheaper.

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