Protective Boarding – Fire Block

Fire Protective Boarding

Fire protective boards are particularly suitable where higher fire ratings, between 90 minutes and 4 hours, are required.

Fire Protective Boards: Stopping Fire And Heat From Spreading

Whenever a fire develops in a building, it is important that the fire stays where it is and that load-bearing structures maintain their load-bearing capabilities for a time sufficient to enable people to evacuate and rescue operations to be carried out. Fire protective boards are designed to do just that as they are resistant against the heat and radiation of the fire. Thanks to their low heat conductivity and high heat absorption, combined with low shrinkage to keep their integrity, they make sure that the temperature on other side of the building board remains low over a long period of time during a fire.

Integrity (E)

Thanks to these capabilities, fire protective boards can be used for many applications, including as fire barriers for:

compartmentation of buildings
encasements or secondary linings for protection of a building’s load-bearing structures
encasement of electrical cables
ventilation and smoke extraction ducts

In all these applications, the fire protective board fulfills the same function. On one side of the board there is the heat of a raging fire; on the other side the temperature remains low.

By keeping the fire and heat locked up behind fire protective boards, the fire does not propagate through the building and the temperature doesn’t increase too much on load-bearing structures. People thus have time to escape to a safe place, fire and rescue services can intervene, the building structure does not collapse, hot smoke can be extracted (essential to the safety of people) and safety-critical systems inside the building keep functioning.

Want to know more about Passive Fire Protection

Fire Resistance

Depending on the application of the board, the term ‘fire resistance’ can have different meanings. In the European test standards different criteria are given. The most important ones are as follows:

R: Load-bearing function– ability of a structure to carry the loads without collapsing.
E: Integrity– ability to stop flames and hot gases from penetrating.
I: Insulation– ability to restrict the temperature rise on the cold side. In most cases, the temperature at the cold surface may not increase more than 140 degrees Celsius on average, or 180 degrees at any local point.

The fire resistance is always expressed in minutes, usually in classes that are multiples of 30 minutes. For example, a fire protected load-bearing steel structure that can withstand fire for at least 90 minutes will be ‘R 90’ , and a partition wall that keeps the flames out and temperatures low for at least 60 minutes will be ‘EI 60’ .