Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The main problem concerning the modification of polymeric materials in order to reduce their combustibility is preservation or improvement of main characteristics reflecting the nature of the original material by a simultaneous imparting the material new qualities typical of fire-safe materials. The solution of the problem is impossible without creating experimental and mathematical models of processes taking place in polymeric composites when flame and thermal sources act on them. At the same time there appeared a tendency of transformation from volume modification to surface and pseudosurface modification of polymeric composites. Under a pseudosurface modification reactionable additives being phosphorylated, epoxy resins or polyvinil alcohol migrate at processing into more heated surface layers of polymeric matrixes, in our case polyolefine ones forming cross-linked structures and a more dense fire-proof surface layer compared to a polymeric matrix . And under surface modification when hardened epoxy polymers, epoxypolymer -base organoplastics and fibre-glass plastics which include phosphorusvanadium containing flame-retardant systems are subject to weak thermal shocks, the flammability of composites decreases two times. The application of intumescent coating after thermal treatment of the surface greatly increases the effectiveness and reliability of flame-protection. By using a complex of methods which includes methods of studying chemical structure of surfaces, physical and chemical processess in the interphase layers have been investigated.