Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Intumescent coating is an important fire protection method for steel structures. Traditionally its fire properties have been evaluated by performing furnace tests using a standardized test procedure and following a standardized time-temperature curve. This procedure is restrictive in performance based fire safety engineering design since it limits the fire condition to the standard one only. In this paper, a model is outlined that can take into account the different fire protection abilities of intumescent coating that will occur depending on what type of fire the coating is subjected to. The model is based on a experimental study, containing about 50 tests, performed in the Cone Calorimeter. Some test results are presented as well as an analysis model of the test results.