Industrial fireproofing

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Industrial fireproofing Cementitious vs.
intumescent fireproofing
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• an industrial fireproofing strategy is a
  prerequisite for being able to secure affordable
  insurance. But despite being just short of
  mandatory for many businesses, straight advice on
  what type of industrial fireproofing strategy to
  pursue can be hard to come by. Many online
  sources tend to dispense advice that seems
  curiously tailored to their own product lines
  upon closer inspection. 

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Active vs. passive fire protection 

• Two terms that come up often in discussions of a
  facilitys fire protection are active and
  passive fireproofing. Active fireproofing (AFP)
  measures are all of those that require some type
  of action, either triggered by ambient conditions
  or an individual, in order to be effective.
  Examples of AFP include the kicking on of a
  sprinkler system or a staff member using a fire
  extinguisher to try to put out a small blaze.
  Your local fire department and the brave work
  they do is perhaps the finest example of AFP.
• Passive fire protection (PFP), on the other hand,
  refers to building design elements and planned
  safety measures meant to control the spread of a
  fire. PFP can help to mitigate the potentially
  disastrous effects of failed AFP measures, like
  broken sprinklers or an extinguisher that hasnt
  been inspected or replaced in a timely manner.
  Examples of PFP measures can include room
  compartmentalization to prevent a fires spread,
  fire doors to limit the spread of smoke and, most
  importantly for our purposes, a fire-resistant
  coating that helps to protect structural steel
  and limit damage to critical infrastructure.

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• One strategy is never a substitute for the other,
  but PFP can help to hedge against unexpected AFP
  measures and to buy time for them to kick into
  effect, hopefully helping to alleviate the
  effects of a fire event within a facility.  Now
  we can take a look at what sets two of the most
  common types of PFP, cementitious and intumescent
  coatings, apart from one another and which
  factors should determine their use

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Cementitious or intumescent coatings?

• Lightweight cementitious coatings have their
  origins in the dense concrete that was often used
  to fireproof industrial facilities up until
  around the mid-twentieth century. Cheap and
  resistant even to very high temperatures, dense
  concrete was eventually superseded by
  cementitious coatings that were not quite as
  heavy (and hence were cheaper and easier to
  apply) once the technology developed.
• Today cementitious coatings remain relatively
  inexpensive materials for the fireproofing of
  facilities. Though labor does have the potential
  to drive up the cost of these jobs, since they
  must be applied in several, successive layers,
  they are still well-suited for dry environments
  where the substrate is not expected to be exposed
  to heavy vibrations and/or impact. 

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• Where they should not be used is in environments
  with high ambient moisture levels, since
  cementitious coatings will inevitably create a
  space between the substrate and the coating
  itself. This space is ideal for moisture to
  settle and for the process of corrosion under
  fireproofing (CUF) to set in.
• Intumescent coatings operate on a different
  principal, however. Rather than forming a
  relatively thick physical barrier between the
  flames and the steel they protect, as
  cementitious coatings do, intumescents
  intumesce, or char and expand, when exposed to
  extreme heat. The coating literally grows as a
  means of forming the type of barrier that
  cementitious coatings maintain regardless of
  temperature. By increasing in volume and
  decreasing in density, intumescents slow the
  heating of steel and prolong the possible
  response time before a significant failure or
  collapse occurs.

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Fire-Proof Applicator of Steel Structures

• Building regulations require certain elements of
  a structure to have fire resistance. Whether or
  not an element requires fire resistance depends
  on the size the building, what it will be used
  for and what the function of the element is.
• When exposed to fire, all commonly used
  structural materials lose some of their
  mechanical strength. Heavily loaded steel will
  lose its designed safety margin at temperature
  around 550C regardless of the grade of steel.
  To protect the structural steel in your building,
  use PAROC fire protection slabs. Depending on the
  application, you can use one of three methods for
  fire protection profile, box and solid.

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• The bigger volume of steel in the exposed area,
  the better fire resistance it has. How quickly
  the steel structure heats up in a fire can simply
  be described as the relation between the surface
  exposed to the fire and the steel volume of the
  profile. This relation is called the section
  factor A/V. A high section factor gives a quick
  temperature raise of the steel. In practice, this
  means that thin steel structures demand thicker
  protection.

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Fire protection of steel profiles in external
walls with plaster boards

• Sometimes columns in external walls can be
  protected from three sides. A 5mm thick RHS
  profile, at a critical temperature of 400
  600C and with the required fire class R 60, can
  be protected from three sides with 20mm thick
  PAROC FPS 17. This only can be done in fire class
  R60 with two layers of plaster board on the
  internal side of the wall. The external side of
  the wall has to be covered with thick plaster
  board at least 9mm thick. The limitation is that
  the steel profiles cant be located next to
  openings (windows and doors). The facade also has
  to be non-combustible.