What are the Advances in Fire Retardant Materials?
Ever since the world has started to be more urbanized, we face more challenges about space and security. Especially in big cities, a house or an apartment is joined through a common wall. It makes spreading fire and flood very easy through the entire building.
But as the material sciences advanced, the construction
sector was introduced by Fire Retardant Material. And then the game changed. Now, we live more safely as
fire-retardant technology has got the advances which we see in fire retardant
panels these days.
i. Use of polymer
Not long ago, houses, offices, and public areas used to have
wooden panels. These were totally made of pure wood with some paint or polish
on their surface for elegance. However, these were heavy and hard to stick to
the surface of walls.
Then scientists came up with the idea of building material
using a few chemical reactions that would result in something better than
wooden panels. These are aluminum composite panels which are the best fire retardant material Singapore uses in construction.
The presence of covalent bonds throughout the chemical
structure of the polymer makes these panels stronger and better fire retardants
than wood panels.
ii. Lightweight and thin sheets
The transportation fee of construction material has always
been a problem as it is dictated by the weight and fragility of components. But
with the invention of lightweight fire retardent material, it has significantly reduced.
Also, the thin and lightweight sheets are easy to stick to
walls with adhesive. Wooden panels were not this easy to attach as they
required nails to stay stick to walls. If your walls are already very thick,
then using a composite panel a few millimeters wide would be a good idea as it
would not look massive.
iii. Use of material instead of chemicals
The wooden panels used a decade ago were a sort of
construction liability. Aside from being massive and hard to adjust, they
required the application of fire retardant chemicals on the surface. It was up
to no significant gain because the chemicals were used up immediately after the
fire broke out.
But the modern fire retardant material does not need such treatment because the
material is fire resistant throughout the structure. This not only saves the
use of trees in making panels but also proves to effectively control the fire
spread than old fire retardants.
iv. Elegance and protection
The composite fire retardant panels have excellent strength
and don’t break upon cutting them. This is the reason these panels are used not
only as a source of protection but for wall design too. Some companies mix dyes
in the liquid aluminum solution to give a hardened panel a colorful
consistency.
Such panels are the fire retardant materials Singapore used
extensively for the construction of its representative buildings.
v. Material flexibility
Aluminum is liquid before anything is added to it.
Manufacturers of composite panels and fire retardant materials use this property to their advantage to
add whatever they want. This is why aluminum composite panels are more flexible
and available in different shapes and sizes. They can be carved into anything
without forming cracks in the structure.