Abstract
As material age, the durability, strength, and other mechanical properties are impacted. The lifespan of a material generally decreases when exposed to weathering conditions such as wind, temperature, humidity, and light. It is important to have knowledge of how materials age and how the material properties are affected. Regarding materials´ fire behaviour and the effect of ageing on these properties, the knowledge is limited. The research questions of the current work are: Are the fire properties of composite materials affected by ageing? And if so, how is it affected? The study is on material at Technology Readiness Level 9 (TRL). In this study, three composite fibre laminates developed for marine applications were exposed to accelerated ageing. Two different ageing conditions were selected, thermal ageing with an increased temperature of 90°C and moisture ageing in a moderately increased temperature of 40°C and a relative humidity of 90%. Samples were collected after one, two and four weeks of ageing. The reaction-to-fire properties after ageing was evaluated using the ISO 5660–1 cone calorimeter and the EN ISO 5659–2 smoke chamber with FTIR gas analysis. The test results showed that the fire behaviour was affected. Two of the composite laminates, both phenolic/basalt composites, showed a deteriorated fire behaviour from the thermal ageing and the third composite laminate, a PFA/glass fibre composite, showed an improved fire behaviour both for thermal and moisture ageing. The smoke toxicity was affected by the accelerated ageing, especially for the PFA/glass fibre composite that showed a higher production of CO and HCN, both for the thermal aged and the moisture aged samples.
Highlights
New products and materials are put on the market every day
The aim of this paper is to further evaluate the accelerated ageing effect on the reaction-to-fire properties of two additional composite materials developed for applications in ships
The third composite laminate used in this study, fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) 3, contained Poly Furfuryl Alcohol (PFA) resin reinforced with glass fibres
Summary
New products and materials are put on the market every day. These products are considered to have passed their final phase of development and are at TRL (Technology Readiness Level) 9. It is known that material properties change with time, especially when exposed to temperature, humidity, wind and light. It has been shown in many studies that mechanical properties change with time resulting in a weakening in these properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. Some of the currently available studies have been presented in review papers by Vahabi et al [5] and Sandinge et al [20] Both present a limited number of studies, showing that accelerated ageing influences the fire performance or has a chemical degrading effect on the flame retardants used in the studied material. The question rises, whether the overall fire safety properties of the products are unaffected by ageing and no further knowledge on the material is needed, or not
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