A bit of an intellectual exercise here. There's an interesting thread running on
Private flying concerning the various actions that might be taken in the event of an engine fire in the air. Various opinions have been offered and discussed as to what you should do in the case of an engine fire in the air.
But it begs an interesting question in my mind. Let's say we've got a particular reason for being very certain we're offering the best possible advice on how to deal with an engine fire. How would we go about developing and evaluating that advice? It presents some interesting questions about flight test risk and conduct which I'm glad nobody has ever
really asked me to address, but it might be an interesting subject to bat around.
My initial thoughts were to divide this into sections, since generating a real engine fire is just asking for trouble. Avoiding smoke and fumes in the cockpit could be fairly easily addressed by fitting a non-noxious coloured smoke generator in the engine compartment and investigating various manoeuvres / vent settings to see what gives the minimum (and an acceptable!) degree of cockpit smoke ingress.
But as to evaluating means of extinguishing an engine fire for flight conditions - I'm mildly stumped. I can think of ways of evaluating this (probably using the Boscombe blower tunnel, a strapped down aeroplane, and a TP in a fireproof suit) that would work - but also cost a fortune and probably destroy half an airframe and several very expensive engines in the process. I've never seen any analytical tools for the purpose - has anybody else? So how could you do this within a reasonable test cost, if you really had to?
Thoughts anybody?
G