Examination of the effect of fire retardant materials on timber

Abstract

Purpose

The fire safety of structures is an existing and important design aspect, which is assured by strict regulations. As a means to adhere to the strict requirements, fire protection has become a core problem. It is particularly difficult to comply with these regulations in the case of timber, which is a combustible material. These problems could be solved by enveloping the wood in fire retardant materials. MSZ EN 1995-1-2 currently does not take into consideration the fire-retardant materials charring rate under fire exposure.

Design/methodology/approach

However, currently these fire retardants are proving to be reliable and depending on their application can achieve better reaction-to-fire classifications. During the research, the authors used five different fire-retardant materials on three different types of wood and tested their behaviours in a laboratory. When selecting them, it was important to choose the species that are most commonly used in the building industry but which have significantly different densities. Our choice fell upon spruce (360 kg/m³), Scots pine (540 kg/m³) and oak (650 kg/m³). During the tests, we examined the weight reduction and the process of burning on the specimens treated with the fire retardant material. In addition, the authors also performed tests by derivatography on both untreated and treated specimen.

Findings

The question is whether the effects of the fire retardants should be taken into consideration when calculating the extent of the burn. The Eurocode (MSZ EN 1995-1-2) does not provide any opinions. On the market, there are manufacturers who are already discussing the possibilities of reducing the burn rate during the qualification of paints. In this paper, based on the results we received, we discuss the beneficial effects of the fire retardants which can be taken into account while measuring cross-sections.

Originality/value

By using fire retardants, a high proportion of cross-sectional area gain is only possible in case of small cross-sections; therefore, it is advisable to use them here as well. This can be effective for example in many smaller cross-sections, when there is a little space and therefore requires a small cross-section. Thus, if a larger cross-section without protection is not possible, it can be replaced by a smaller cross section, treated with a fire retardant.

Citation

Lubloy, E., Takács, L.G., Enczel, D.I. and Cimer, Z. (2021), "Examination of the effect of fire retardant materials on timber", Journal of Structural Fire Engineering, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 429-445. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSFE-11-2020-0036