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2019
Conference Paper
Title
Improved fire performance of natural flax fabric reinforced polymer composites by fire retardants
Abstract
Poor fire performance of natural fibre reinforced polymer composite materials is a critical issue which should be addressed prior to the wide acceptance of those materials for engineering application. In this paper, natural flax fabric reinforced epoxy composites were treated with two types of fire retardants (i.e. ammonium polyphosphate (APP) and aluminium hydroxide (aluminium hydroxide (Al(OH)3)) with different contents in order to improve the fire performance of the composites. Untreated and fire retardant treated flax fabric reinforced epoxy composites (FFRP) were fabricated and subjected to limited oxygen index (LOI) and the Underwriters Laboratories (UL)-94 horizontal and vertical fire tests to assess their fire performance. In addition, flat-coupon tensile test was performed for the untreated and treated flax/epoxy composite. The test results indicated that with an increase in the mass contents of both APP and Al(OH)3, the LOI values of the FFRP composites increased correspondingly. The FFRP composites treated by 20% and 30% (with mass content of the epoxy resin used) of APP fire retardants self-extinguished within 30 seconds and 10 seconds respectively after removed the flame in the UL-94 vertical fire tests. © APFIS 2019. All right reserved.