Performance of Endothermic Flame Retardant Fillers

While descriptive papers on the performance in various tests abound, scientific understanding is only partly developed at present. This is due to a number of factors, especially the notorious difficulty is defining and assessing the fire performance of materials using laboratory tests. A great deal of the available literature is also in a patent or product promotional form, and of limited scientific use. The inability to find fillers where the 

As mentioned earlier, this test has been the most widely used, despite its limitations. 

The popularity of the test is due to its simplicity, use of relatively inexpensive equipment and small samples and good reproducibility. Nevertheless there is considerable controversy over it s relevance. Ashley and Rothon [8] and Hornsby and Watson [26] have shown how it fails to correlate with other tests when applied to filled systems. As described later in this Section, this is probably due to the dominant role filler ash structures can play in the heat balance so important in this test. 

The enhanced performance of fine fillers in this test has created considerable interest as, if reflected in larger scale tests, it may point the way to allowing reduced filler loadings to be employed. Unfortunately, fine fillers also generally have a more detrimental effect on processing and physical properties so there may be no overall gain. 

The interpretation problems outlined previously and the so far unexplained effects of particle size, make comparisons of the performance of various potential flame retardant fillers reported in the literature very questionable. This is graphically illustrated by the case of MCS referred to earlier (Section 6.4.2). 

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