Neue Wege: Reaktive Brandschutzbeschichtungen für Extrembedingungen

New ways: Reactive fire protection coatings for extreme conditions

Fire safety in industrial plants, buildings and transportation is essential for the safety level and sustainable competitiveness of Germany as a technology location. The aim of preventative structural fire protection is to prevent fire and smoke propagation in the case of fire for a certain period of time, with the result that required firefighting and rescue operations can be carried out. This is done, among others, by requirements on fire resistance of fire-stressed components. The fire resistance of a component is the ability to keep mechanical stability and/or thermal insulation for a certain period in a standard fire resistance test. For many components intumescent coatings increase very effectively the fire resistance. However, the coatings and fire tests have to be adapted and further developed due to increasingly complex applications and/or extreme requirements. Current research focuses on the development of new materials (e. g. geopolymers, ceramifying coatings, silicone-based coatings) for extreme fire scenarios (high temperatures, long burning times), the implementation of complex functionalities (complex geometries, moving parts) and the development of new testing methods (fire resistance as bench-scale tests, cost-effective screening, fire resistance in extreme fire scenarios). The aim is not a prescriptive assessment but a performance-based assessment in individual fire scenarios or of complex components. This study presents and discusses new approaches for reactive fire protection systems under extreme conditions and its testing facilities facing new challenges. The focus is on newly developed bench-scale test methods for screening, new coating materials, and to assess specific and material-specific aspects of fire resistance under extreme conditions.