Fire protection is an important factor in building safe buildings. It includes the total amount of measures planned and implemented in the building, as well as the measures taught to building occupants. This is also something you do not want to happen, if a fire roars in your building. Although every piece of furniture, or decoration in the room will do its best to ensure that a fire does not occur from the beginning, flames have too many uncontrollable factors. Therefore, we can only make our building materials as non-combustible or flame-retardant as possible.
Most people are familiar with the basics of fire extinguishing (sprinklers, fire extinguishers, etc.), but passive fire protection that contains the fire at the point of origin may actually be invisible.
And what is passive fire protection?
Passive fire protection is an important part of the fire safety strategy. It is built into the structure of the building to protect people's lives and limit the financial impact caused by damage to the building and its contents. It does this by:
Limiting the spread of fire and smoke by containing fire and smoke in a compartment, protecting the basic escape route of escape routes, protecting the building structure, thereby ensuring its sustainability.
Passive fire protection devices are built into the structure to provide stability, and built into walls and floors to divide the building into areas of manageable risk, compartments. These areas are designed to limit the spread andprogression of fire, allowing occupants to escape and providing protection for firefighters. This protection is either provided by the materials from which the building is constructed, or added to the building to enhance its fire resistance.
Through compartment fire protection, the building forms defined areas, which also limits the spread of fire and smoke. The size and number of compartments are defined in all building codes, depending on the building area or volume and the amount of combustibles on each floor. Building codes vary from country to country. Compartments are always vertical (fireproof floors/ceilings) and horizontal (firewalls). An obvious and always visible protection measure is fire doors. However, where all types of services such as cables, pipes, ducts etc. pass through, the tightness of the compartment must be ensured again by installing adequate penetration seals.
And for penetration seals, it is mainly a combination of several products, such as coatings, mortars, collars, wraps, sealants, backing materials. The key issue here is how the materials interact with each other.
Since all systems have been fire tested, the result is a certain fire resistance, shown as a fire resistance rating value. All test standards, and the standards clearly define how the fire resistance rating must be shown in the report. For load-bearing elements, the applied load and/or load level should also be included. For penetration seals and joints, additional elements are required, such as pipe end configuration.
Many building materials have a certain natural fire resistance, so they already have built-in fire protection functions. An example of such a material is clay brick, which itself is fire-resistant when built into a wall. There are also other materials such as rock wool board, but the wood used to build wooden floors may have almost no such built-in fire protection, and may require additional protection, such as in the form of fireproof boards fixed under the ceiling.
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