EoW March 2008

Feature

Fire Safety Materials

The super products!

The ever expanding requirements of fire safety and environmental protection call for new materials all the time, and they appear. Scarcely is an innovative fluoropolymer inducted into the pantheon of fire- retardant materials than another compound promises enhancement. It is nothing less than remarkable how accustomed we have become to the periodic arrival of new vigilante materials; and how dependably — almost how casually — they deliver. Consider a term in common use: ‘flame- retardant wire or cable.’ Then consider the definition of flame-retardant wire or cable: ‘an electrical conductor capable of maintaining integrity when exposed to open-flame temperatures of 1,000° F without propagating a fire or resulting in falling burning particles or generating large volumes of smoke.’

That is the profile of a super product.

The exhaustive work of invention and testing has yielded a conductor (or multiple conductors) covered by a layer of primary insulation; then by a layer of silicone rubber; then by a layer, or more than one, of glass fibre. There follows another layer of silicone rubber, itself covered by braided asbestos impregnated with a material to curb swelling. Or, the second layer of silicone rubber may be wrapped with asbestos tape which is then covered by a layer of elastomericmaterial. The experimentation, for ever-higher values of fire-retardancy, never stops. We take products like these for granted because we can. Those who have made their careers in a category of the wire and cable industry uniquely responsible for the preservation of life and property enable us to do so.

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EuroWire – March 2008