Fire and heat resistant materials

Details Fire and heat resistant materials Fire and heat resistant materials

1995-02-03

1997-07-08

Zirker, Daniel

Fabric (woven, knitted, or nonwoven textile or cloth, etc.)

Woven fabric

Including a free metal or alloy constituent

428920, 428921, 442257, 442268, 442243, 442316, 442318, 442377, 442385, A62C 806, B32B 526, D06M 2308, D04M 142

Patent

active

056459262

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
The present Invention relates to fire and heat resistant materials and their use as barriers to the propagation of fire heat, and flame.
A wide variety of materials are employed as barriers to the propagation of fire. They resist the advance of a fire to a corresponding wide degree. Clearly materials which readily ignite and are readily combusted provide little or no barrier whilst at the other extreme materials such as asbestos will resist extremes of heat and fire.
Where a rigid barrier such as an asbestos sheet cannot be utilised, protective and barrier fabric structures are adopted in a variety of types of textile products having different levels of performance. Within the United Kingdom, for example, such products find themselves within the end-use areas of both protective clothing (workwear, civil emergency services, defence organisations) and bartlet textiles (transport upholstery fabrics, transport upholstery barriers, contract/domestic barriers). In terms of performance, known textiles designed for heat and flame protection can be divided into three broad categories: (i) flame retardant conventional textiles which transform to char barriers when heated above 250.degree. C.; (ii) higher performance textiles which char above 400.degree. C.; and (iii) ceramic fibre-containing fabrics which resist prolonged exposures up to about 1000.degree. C.
Fabrics possessing organic fibre contents which have desirable textile properties at ambient conditions, carbonise when heated in air or inert atmosphere above 250.degree. C. and slowly oxidise in air above 400.degree.-500.degree. C. are well known. These are typified by a whole range of products ranging from flame retardant cotton and wool fabrics to inherently flame and heat resistant polyaromatic structures. Of these, the higher performance examples such as aramid and/or carbonised fibre-containing barrier fabrics will survive only a few minutes when heated up to temperatures as high as 1000.degree. C.
The organic materials which are used to form these known initially flexible barriers tend to char upon exposure to high temperature to produce a black residue. Although these charred residues are potentially valuable as barriers to the propagation of the fire, in practice, as indicated above, they are not terribly effective because the charred residues are brittle and become increasingly fragile when they oxidise at temperatures above 400.degree. C. Both these results mean that the residues will tend to lose their mechanical integrity in the harsh environments associated with many fires e.g. in vehicles of various kinds where they may be subject to strenuous vibration and form ashes which provide no barrier at all to flame propagation.
Inorganic materials such as ceramic fibres have also been used to form flexible barriers but although they do not char, they too can become brittle and they may even melt when exposed to high temperatures leaving residues which are no longer effective to prevent the spread of fire. One class of products not subject to these disadvantages are the fabrics comprising only inorganic fibres based on silica or alumina which have been found to withstand temperatures in excess of 900.degree. C. and as high as 1100.degree. C. for considerable periods of time (e.g. of the order of days and weeks). However, these particular inorganic materials are even more expensive than the high performance organic fibre-containing barrier fabrics they replace. Also they have significantly higher densities and very high moduli which means they may be unacceptable when lightness and flexibility respectively are at a premium.
Another quite different approach which is widely used to render materials resistant to fire is the application of an intumescent paint or coating. Such paint formulations char and give off gas when exposed to high temperatures and thus form an expanded charred layer which serves to insulate the substrate and to protect it from the fire. Such paints and coatings cannot be used on all substrates however or in all circumstances. They can

REFERENCES:
patent: 3915777 (1975-10-01), Kaplan
patent: 3934066 (1976-01-01), Murch
patent: 4726987 (1988-02-01), Trask et al.
patent: 4847140 (1989-07-01), Jaskowski
patent: 5384188 (1995-01-01), Lebold et al.
Horrocks, et al: "Fibre-Intumescent Interactive Systems for Barrier Textiles" Flame Retardants, 26/27 Jan. 1994.

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