- Author
- Butler, K. M. | Baum, H. R. | Kashiwagi, T.
- Title
- Three-Dimensional Kinetic Model for the Swelling of Intumescent Materials.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NISTIR 5499, September 1994,
- Book or Conf
- National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual Conference on Fire Research: BOOK OF ABSTRACTS. October 17-20, 1994, Gaithersburg, MD, 109-110 p., 1994
- Keywords
- fire research | intumescent coatings | kinetics | swelling | heat transfer | gasification | fire models
- Abstract
- An intumescent coating protects the underlying surface from fire by swelling into a thick insulating char. Design of intumescent materials has proceeded largely by systematic testing of a variety of formulations, since the mechanisms of physical, thermal and chemical behavior are not as yet well understood. Previous models of intumescent behavior have treated the system as a one-dimensional heat transfer problem through a coating consisting of a char layer and a layer of virgin material separated by a thin pyrolysis zone. In this work, a fully three-dimensional, time-dependent numerical model combining the dynamics of the swelling process, the heat transfer through the coating, and the chemistry of gasification is described.