Bisby, Luke A.

Triantafyllidis, Zafiris

English

Epoxy intumescents are reactive polymer coatings used for fire protection of steel structural elements, commonly in offshore oil and gas applications, amongst others. These materials react and expand to form an insulating char layer when heated, thus protecting underlying steel from fire. Thick-film fibre-reinforced epoxy intumescents are a special class of such coatings that are extensively used in offshore and industrial facilities to provide protection against hydrocarbon and jet fires; their durability to harsh environmental exposure and mechanical damage are essential in these applications. To enhance the stability and integrity of these coatings continuous fibre reinforcement is typically embedded within the polymer coating. However, designers currently assume that the presence of this fibre reinforcement is only a means of strengthening and maintaining the integrity of expanding fire protective char during fire exposure; the structural contribution of the fibres at ambient temperature is ignored. The coating remains in an unreacted state for the majority of its life until a possible fire, and is essentially a fibre-reinforced polymer composite intumescent coating (FRIC). In reality, this coating has strength and stiffness which may actually enhance the ambient performance of the underlying structure. This paper examines, for the first time, the mechanical performance of an epoxy-based intumescent coating with varying amounts of internal fibre reinforcement through a series of uniaxial tensile tests. Experiments are presented on the flexural behaviour of coated steel I-sections protected with two subtly different intumescent systems. The data demonstrate the ambient temperature mechanical benefits of FRICs applied to structural steelwork, indicating their potential use as a system for combined structural strengthening and fire protection.</p

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Fibre-reinforced epoxy intumescent coatings for strengthening and fire protecting steel beams

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