Although ignition of flammable liquids by hot surfaces is well known in the automotive and aviation industries, little fundamental research has been conducted to understand this ignition mechanism and only limited data is available in the literature. In this paper, we present results from over 2,500 ignition tests using a simple, highly reproducible experimental set-up involving a horizontal flat plate, a single drop of liquid and a quiescent environment. Results from the 14 automotive and aviation fluids tested showed that ignition was probabilistic, that the probabilistic behavior occurs over a relatively broad temperature range and that the data can be treated statistically using logistic regression. This statistical approach offers the advantages of inference and diagnostic techniques which parallel those of linear regression, and provides a well-defined relationship between surface temperature and ignition probability.

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