Intumescent Flame-Retardant Treatments for Flexible Barriers

Abstract

Intumescent flame-retardant systems are known from several years in coating for the protection of building structure against fire. More recently, this concept was applied to polymer and to flexible structure such as textiles. The aim of this paper is to review the use of the intumescent flame-retardant process for flexible materials. In a first part, the mechanism of intumescence is described. It is pointed out that limited factors to apply this process to textiles are the durability of the systems, the stiffness due to surface deposit of the treatment and the spinnability of intumescent formulations for the bulk treatment. In a second and in a third part, recent developments to overcome those problems are presented, respectively, for natural and synthetic fibers.