Fire Performance of Foam-Plastic Building Insulation

Abstract

specifiers, end-users, and regulators. The occurrence of several major fires in the last few years involving foam-plastic insulation suggests that this class of products may be subject to incorrect installation and that fire safety lessons of the last 25 years are becoming lost on some participants in today’s construction industry. Recent fire-safety-engineering research has provided new understandings of how the synergism of physical properties and the chemical makeup of individual materials can result in unique and frequently unobvious fire-related properties that can affect individual projects. By reviewing fire-safety-engineering aspects of current foam building-insulation technology, this article demonstrates that particular installations of plastic foam insulations often have unique ignition and fire growth properties. Installation and use as mandated by today’s building codes should only be considered minimum requirements when using these products. A myriad of insulation products are currently on the market and most possess their own set of fire-performance properties. In the United States, 1973 marked a turning point in the use of plastic building insulations based on foams manufactured from polymer resins. Prior to that, model code regulations had not adequately addressed the fire performance of this group of products, although their use had grown dramatically. As a result of this growth and partly because of a lack of appropriate regulation, serious incidents occurred involving foam-plastic insulation, and this focused attention on its fire-related properties. After 1973, new language was put in place in the model codes, and steadily numbers of foam-related fires dropped. This change coincided with an enhanced awareness in the construction indus