- Author
-
Ohlemiller, T. J.
|
Shields, J. R.
- Title
- Prevention of Surface Fire Growth on Structural Composites.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
NISTIR 5904,
October 1996,
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Book or Conf
- National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual Conference on Fire Research: Book of Abstracts. October 28-31, 1996,
Gaithersburg, MD,
137-138 p.,
1996
- Keywords
-
fire research
|
fire science
|
composite materials
|
fire growth
|
structures
|
coatings
- Abstract
- Fiber-reinforced polymer composites are very attractive materials for a variety of infrastructure uses. For example, they are capable of replacing concrete and steel in such applications as bridge decks or even entire bridge structures and they are expected to offer significant life-cycle cost advantages in applications of this type. However, such large volume applications call for commodity polymer resins like polyester or vinyl ester whose flammability can be a substantial concern. The traditional way in which to deal with this flammability issue has been to incorporate bromine-based flame retardants into the resin. Another alternative is the use of phenolic resins; these strongly-charring polymers are inherently less flammable than the ester resins.