Automotive and aviation manufacturing bring together several hazard categories at once, often in the same facility. Paint and coating operations involve flammable solvents, spray booths, and the ventilation and static control challenges that come with atomized liquid transfer. Metal fabrication, machining, and finishing can generate combustible dust from aluminum, titanium, and composite materials, hazards that are easy to underestimate because the shop floor doesn’t look anything like a grain elevator or a chemical plant. And as both industries shift toward electrification, lithium-ion battery manufacturing, testing, and integration have introduced thermal runaway, gas generation, and pressure hazards that most facilities weren’t built to handle a decade ago.
Aviation adds its own layer with fuel handling and storage, composite material fabrication that generates fine, often conductive carbon fiber dust, and increasingly, hydrogen and alternative fuel systems entering both ground support and propulsion applications. Automotive plants dealing with EV production face a related challenge: battery packs and cells that need to be understood not just for their electrical performance, but for what happens when a cell goes into thermal runaway inside an enclosure, a vehicle, or a storage area.
HazBasis supports automotive and aviation manufacturers with flammable liquid fire and explosion analysis for paint and coating operations, combustible dust and ignition source analysis for metal and composite fabrication, hazardous area classification for solvent and fuel handling areas, and battery ARC and thermal runaway gas testing for EV and energy storage programs. We work across these hazard types together, since a modern automotive or aviation facility rarely has just one to manage.