Services for the Aviation Industry

The Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) is Britain's leading industrial health and safety facility with over 30 years of research experience across all sectors. HSL operates as an agency of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). As well as delivering a comprehensive service to HSE, we are also able to offer our portfolio of skills and expertise to other public sector organisations and the private sector.

In the field of aviation health and safety, HSL is able to put together multi-disciplinary teams to offer high quality research, scientific and technical support, forensic investigation of accidents and incidents, and training.

Operating from a 550 acre site near Buxton, Derbyshire, we offer unrivalled facilities for laboratory and large scale experiments. We have the biggest impact track in Europe, a large open air test range and two large tunnels for studies of explosions and fires as well as numerous smaller experimental rigs.

HSL is also a member of the Association of Aerospace Universities (AAU):

  Click here to visit AAU's website (www.aau.ac.uk)

HSL's wide ranging expertise encompasses:

• Engineering (aerospace, mechanical, electrical and chemical);
• Fire, explosion and process safety;
• Chemistry and physics;
• Computational fluid dynamics;
• Materials science and stress analysis;
• Risk assessment;
• Human factors;
• Health and environmental sciences.

Examples of our aviation-related work include:

• Experimental studies of the high temperature, high velocity jet that results from a gas turbine combustor failure;
• Impact behaviour of fuel tanks and the subsequent ignition and burning of the tank contents;
• Assessment of the ability of additives to reduce the ignition potential of fuels following release during impact;
• Investigation of smoke movement and evacuation in complex enclosed spaces;
• Application of human factors expertise and computer modelling to studies of crowd movement and behaviour;
• Studies of thermal comfort and thermal stress in both hot and cold environments.

HSL's capabilities and expertise relevant to the aviation industry include:

Aircraft fires, smoke-related hazards and fire detection

• Fire behaviour in confined spaces (e.g. aircraft cabins and cockpits) and in complex buildings (e.g. airport terminals and hangers);
• Combustor burn through - modelling, experimental measurement and assessment;
• Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling of fires, heat transfer, smoke movement, air flows over aerodynamic structures and in the cabin environment;
• Jet and pool fire attack on aircraft and other structures;
• Development and testing of fire and explosion protection devices and systems including fire suppression systems.

Microbiological risks in civil aviation

• Person to person spread of infection;
• Spread of respiratory infections via air handling systems;
• Vector-borne infections e.g. malaria mosquitoes in luggage;
• Food hygiene.

Health and safety specialist services

• Human factors:
  • safety culture, safety management systems, risk taking behaviour;
  • passenger safety and evacuation;
  • psychosocial factors in ill-health, stress, violence;
  • safety-related ergonomics e.g. visibility from cockpits, application of virtual reality.
  
• Drugs of abuse and alcohol screening;
• Structural integrity, crashworthiness, fracture mechanics.

Occupational health and hygiene

• Exposure to chemicals, fibres, biological agents, noise and vibration and associated health effects;
• Exposure control including containment techniques e.g. ventilation and filtration systems.

Our Commitment to Quality

We are committed to forging mutually beneficial relationships with our customers and to the provision of a quality service at an affordable price. HSL's quality management system covers all of our activities and is approved to ISO 9001:2000 by a UKAS-accredited Certification Body.

Further Details

Contact our Business Development Group by telephone (+44) 01298 218218, fax (+44) 01298 218822 or email hslinfo@hsl.gov.uk.

  Back to the top