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Effect of ambient wind on the flame retardancy of intumescent coatings

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Abstract

Ambient wind is an important environmental factor in fire safety research. However, little work has been conducted to investigate the effect of ambient wind on the flame retardancy of intumescent fire-retardant coatings. In this work, steel plates coated with a commercially available intumescent fire-retardant coating were applied for the fire resistance test. External heat flux and ambient wind speed were set constant to simulate actual fire scenarios. The swelling evolutions of intumescent coatings with/without wind effect were recorded. The morphology, structure, thermal stability, and impact resistance of chars at the front end and the rear end were analyzed. Results showed that intumescent coatings undergo a non-uniform swelling process with wind effect. The evolutions of coating thickness, coating surface temperature, and steel temperature can be divided into three stages. Ambient wind affects the coating surface temperature by convective cooling and char oxidation reaction. The maximum coating surface temperature at the front end is 25 °C higher than the rear end. Besides, ambient wind accelerates (and decelerates) the char oxidation reaction at the front (and the rear) end, resulting in the coating thickness at the front end growing slower than the rear end. The char at the front end is thin and condensed with good impact resistance and thermal stability. However, its poor thermal insulation accelerates the steel temperature increase at the front end and promotes the failure of intumescent coatings. Thus, ambient wind decreases the flame retardancy of intumescent fire-retardant coating.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by High-Tech Industry Science and Technology Innovation Leading Plan of Hunan Province (No. 2020GK2079), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan (No.2022JJ40618), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51906261), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University (No. 2021zzts0767).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Disaster Prevention Science and Safety Technology, School of Civil Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410075, China

    Chuangang Fan, Yuhao Li, Yuxin Gao, Long Yan & Zhengyang Wang

  2. Key Laboratory for Green and Advanced Civil Engineering Materials and Application Technology of Hunan Province, College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Deju Zhu

  3. Hunan Dongfanghong Construction Group, Changsha, 410205, China

    Changhong Ou

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  1. Chuangang Fan
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Contributions

Chuangang Fan and Zhengyang Wang were involved in conceptualization, project administration and supervision. Chuangang Fan, Long Yan, Deju Zhu, Changhong Ou and Zhengyang Wang were involved in writing—review & editing. Yuhao Li and Yuxin Gao were involved in the investigation and collected resources. Yuhao Li was involved in writing—original draft. Yuxin Gao performed validation. Long Yan, Deju Zhu, Changhong Ou and Zhengyang Wang were involved in methodology. Zhengyang Wang was involved in data curation and funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Zhengyang Wang.

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Fan, C., Li, Y., Gao, Y. et al. Effect of ambient wind on the flame retardancy of intumescent coatings. J Therm Anal Calorim 147, 14329–14341 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-022-11593-0

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