The hospitality shown by employees of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group in hosting the committee's site visit and the time and effort taken in meetings and presentations are greatly appreciated. Individuals who prepared presentations or conducted factory and assembly line tours included James Likes, chief engineer for Interiors, Everett Division; Bruce Alexander, Interiors Engineering; Alan Anderson, chief payloads engineer; John Daniels, Production Engineering; Robert Elliot, Technology and Product Development; Sally Hasselbrack, Materials and Process Engineering; Kenneth Fairchild, factory manager; Mark Fee, Interiors Design; and Peter Guard, Technology and Product Development. The committee's time at Boeing provided a practical view of what goes into the design and production of an aircraft interior.

The committee acknowledges Craig Egenes and Ken Dowd of Walter, Dorwin, Teague and Associates for their presentations on aircraft cabin architecture and interior design.

The committee also thanks the individuals who participated in the Conference on Fire- and Smoke-Resistant Materials. The information and ideas generated at the conference were invaluable to the committee's work. In particular, the effort that the invited speakers expended in preparing papers and presentations for the conference is appreciated. Papers were presented by Hans-Dieter Berg, Deutche Aerospace Airbus; Hanns-Jöerg Betz, Lufthansa German Airlines; Dougal D. Drysdale, University of Edinburgh; Sally A. Hasselbrack, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group; Thomas E. McSweeny, Federal Aviation Administration; Thomas M. Murray, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group; David Purser, Fire Research Station, U.K.; James G. Quintiere, University of Maryland; Constantine P. Sarkos, Federal Aviation Administration; Swen J. Schaich, Deutche Aerospace Airbus; Usman Sorathia, Naval Surface Warfare Center; Archie Tewarson, Factory Mutual Research Corporation; Edward D. Weil, Polytechnic University; Charles A. Wilkie, Marquette University; and Martel Zeldin, City University of New York. Also the committee acknowledges the efforts of the workshop session chairs: Stephanie Skaggs, New Mexico Engineering Research Institute; Richard Gann, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Dennis Nollen, DuPont; and John Rock, Amoco Performance Products.

The committee is particularly grateful to the Federal Aviation Administration liaison representatives, Thor Eklund and Richard Lyon, for their participation in a number of committee discussions.

The chair of the committee thanks the members for their dedication and patience during the preparation of the conference proceedings and the study report. Their diligence and goodwill made for an unusually effective team effort.

Finally, the committee gratefully acknowledges the support of Thomas E. Munns, National Materials Advisory Board senior program officer and Aida C. Neel, National Materials Advisory Board senior project assistant.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has established an Advanced Fire Safe Materials Research Program to meet the requirements of the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988. The program's objective is "to discover the fundamental relationships between the composition and structure of materials and their behavior in fires to enable the design of a totally fire-resistant cabin for future commercial aircraft. Research will be basic in nature and will focus on synthesis, characterization, modeling, and processing of new materials and material combinations to improve the fire performance, increase the functionality, and reduce the cost of next-generation cabin materials."

The FAA requested that the National Research Council, through its National Materials Advisory Board, recommend long-term research directions in promising areas based on projected technology. Towards this end, the National Research Council established the Committee on Fire- and Smoke-Resistant Materials for Commercial Aircraft Interiors. This committee met several times during the course of its study and development of this report. The committee itself was balanced in regard to the varied science and technology aspects required for such an interdisciplinary study.

The committee hosted a Conference on Fire-and Smoke-Resistant Materials, which was held at the National Academy of Sciences on November 8–10, 1994. Conference attendees included representatives from industry, government, and academia. The conference participants identified trends in aircraft fire safety and suggested promising research directions for the FAA's program in smoke- and fire-resistant materials. The conference proceedings, containing 15 invited papers and summaries of the workshop sessions, have been published and serve as an important resource for the preparation of the committee's report.

The ultimate product of this committee report are the conclusions and recommendations on research opportunities that meet the requirements of the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988. The committee strongly supports these conclusions and recommendations, and as experts in this area are very much aware of the high-priority urgency for support of these recommendations, even in these difficult times of "downsizing" research. A commitment to a longer-term view will allow us to have the necessary materials for fire safety for the new construction required for continued economical air transportation, as well as keeping the United States in its traditional leadership role in passenger aircraft construction.

Comments and suggestions that readers of this report wish to make can be sent via Internet electronic mail to nmab@nas.edu or by FAX to the National Materials Advisory Board (202) 334-3718.