Firefighters often face complex and dark environments such as the smoke-filled fire interior scene and the deep mountains and old forests where they cannot see their fingers at night, and the use of high-performance and reliable lighting equipment is an important guarantee for firefighters to complete fire fighting and rescue, mountaineering search and rescue tasks.
Current status of lighting equipment for fire brigades
At present, the lighting equipment used in the fire brigade mainly includes wearable explosion-proof overhead lamps, portable strong light lamps, mobile lifting lights, etc., and the light source basically adopts single-pearl self-light LED, halogen lamp, xenon lamp, etc. Through the investigation of the grassroots level, the current situation of the use of grassroots lighting equipment is summarized as follows:
(1) The single pearl white LED light source has poor light source penetration in the fire and smoke environment, and the reliability of the single pearl LED is not high.
(2) Halogen lamps, xenon lamps, etc., using yellow light sources, due to high power, high power consumption, short use time, and the structure of this type of light source has poor impact resistance, easy to bump and damage.
(3) The use of halogen lamps, xenon lamps mobile lifting lighting and other large lighting equipment, can achieve large-area lighting, but the bulb power is large, electric energy consumption is large, need to be equipped with large-capacity batteries or power generation equipment, resulting in the overall size of the equipment, heavy weight, not easy to carry and transition combat, and at the same time limited by power supply, not suitable for long-term operation.
The feasibility of LED technology in the application of fire lighting equipment
Through the understanding of the technical performance characteristics of LED light sources, combined with the actual combat needs of the fire brigade, it is believed that the following characteristics of LED can be applied to fire lighting equipment in order to develop high-performance and high-reliability lighting equipment.
(1) The characteristics of LED energy saving and high luminous efficiency can minimize power consumption and extend lighting time in equipment equipped with the same capacity power supply and the same illumination, which meets the basic needs of the fire brigade for long-term fire fighting and rescue in complex environments, and further reduces the factors that reduce the rescue efficiency due to the replacement of lighting equipment.
(2) Because the LED is encapsulated by epoxy resin solid-state packaging, it is impact resistant, has a long service life, and has high performance reliability, which meets the needs of high-reliability equipment required by the fire brigade in complex environments such as dense smoke inside the fire scene, and can prevent the loss of lighting guarantee due to equipment bump damage.
(3) LED due to the small size and light weight of a single bead, and the use of chip integration technology to make high-power lighting equipment, the development of multi-LED integrated lighting equipment, in the case of ensuring the lighting needs to further reduce the weight of the equipment, prolong the service life.
The development direction of LED technology in the application of fire lighting equipment
(1) Application of LED light source in firefighting individual lighting equipment.
(a) It can develop towards the yellow light source with strong penetration in the dense smoke environment or a single device multi-color light source, and use the three-color computer control technology to develop intelligent lighting equipment, and ensure the needs of a single light-emitting device in different lighting environments by controlling the luminous color.
(b) To the development of multi-bead LED parallel structure, multi-bead parallel structure can reduce the risk of loss of lighting due to single bead structure or single bead damage in multi-bead tandem structure caused by damage to the entire equipment, and improve the reliability of firefighters’ single lighting equipment.
(2) Develop large-illumination, lightweight mobile fire lighting equipment. Using multi-chip integration technology, by coating a thermally conductive metal layer on the printed circuit board, selecting high thermal conductivity and low thermal expansion (such as A1SiC) packaging materials, increasing the thermal conductivity structure of the shell, and making high-power LED light source.
(3) LED systems combined with solar technology can be developed into green fire lighting equipment. Under the overall deterioration of the global environment, the fire brigade, as a social rescue force to protect the safety of people’s lives and property, should use more green lighting equipment. Combined with the characteristics of DC drive structure of LED, the use of solar cells can provide DC voltage characteristics, the combination of solar power supply system and LED equipment to make a pure green lighting system, can reduce the fuel consumption of the fire brigade in the rescue process, and at the same time make the lighting equipment develop towards diversified guarantee.
Concluding remarks
With the continuous improvement of fire fighting and rescue capabilities of the fire brigade, high-performance, high-tech fire fighting and rescue equipment is the necessary guarantee for combat, in the case of the wide application of LED lighting technology in the industry, the continuous innovation and maturity of technology, combined with the actual needs of the fire brigade, actively apply LED lighting technology to fire lighting equipment, for the development of high performance, high reliability and diversified lighting equipment is of great significance.
