Influence of external heat flux and coating thickness on the thermal insulation properties of two different intumescent coatings using cone calorimeter and numerical analysis

Polymeric intumescent coatings are fire protective materials that increase their thermal resistance when exposed to high temperatures to prevent building structures from damage. The idea of the investigation was to develop a simple test method to determine the time dependent thermal conductivity of intumescent coatings. Therefore steel plates were coated with two different intumescent systems. During cone calorimeter tests the temperature at the back side of the coated plates was measured. These results were used to calculate the time dependent thermal resistance of the protective layer with the simulation program IOPT2D for different external heat fluxes and different layer thickness.