Research of the effect of fire temperature regime on the effectiveness of intumescent coating designed for fire protection of steel structures

Introduction. The usage of intumescent coating (hereinafter referred to as IC) is justified by the development of a fire protection project, taking into account the data on its fire protection efficiency, estimated under the influence of standard temperature conditions, the usage of which can lead to overestimating the fire resistance margin in the project or underestimating the thermal impact on the steel building structures with IC fire protection in conditions of a real fire.

Aims and purposes. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effect of fire temperature conditions on the effectiveness of IC. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were carried out: a temperature mode of fire in a building under different fire loads by the example of a warehouse building was estimated; experiments to estimate the influence of different heat fluxes, reduced thickness of metal and IC thickness on its effectiveness by the full factor experiment of the type 2 were conducted.

Methods. To mathematically simulate real temperature fires, the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) software package, which implements a field (differential) mathematical model, was used. To study the effect of the obtained fire temperature regimes on the effectiveness of IC, experiments were carried out according to the plan of a complete factor experiment type 2. The test specimens were carbon steel metal plates with dimensions of 100 × 100 mm with reduced thickness of 3 and 4.5 mm and painted with 0.25 and 0.5 mm organic-based single-component IC. A radiant heat flux panel with a radiant heat flux density of 10 to 50 kW/m2 was used to assess the effects of heat flux.

Results and discussion. In the course of numerical experiments in the FDS software package, it was found that the thermal impact on steel building structures during a fire can differ significantly from the standard temperature regime, both upwards and downwards. The results of the experiment showed that the heating time of the test samples had the greatest influence of the actors under consideration (the value of the heat flux, the reduced thickness of the metal, the thickness of IC) had the value of the heat flux, as the largest absolute value of the regression equation was obtained.

Conclusion. The assumption of possible underestimation of the thermal effect under “standard” temperature conditions on the fire resistance of steel building structures with IC fire protection was confirmed by the tests.

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