Fire pro­tec­tion for plas­tic and rub­ber products

The test method depends on the respec­tive flam­ma­bil­i­ty class. The test spec­i­men is aligned either hor­i­zon­tal­ly (mark­ing H) or ver­ti­cal­ly (mark­ing V) and then exposed to a defined flame of a Bun­sen burn­er for a cer­tain time. The most strin­gent flame retar­dant clas­si­fi­ca­tion is the 5VA test.

The pre­sump­tion is that the mate­r­i­al with the high­est fire pro­tec­tion class is always the best choice. How­ev­er, max­i­miz­ing the fire rat­ing may mean that the mate­r­i­al los­es oth­er desir­able prop­er­ties. Mate­r­i­al selec­tion in rub­ber and plas­tics is com­plex. There are sev­er­al fac­tors to con­sid­er in rela­tion. Turn­ing one screw can have con­se­quences elsewhere.

For exam­ple, the use of addi­tives that improve flame retar­dan­cy can have a neg­a­tive impact on oth­er prop­er­ties, such as UV sta­bil­i­ty, flex­ur­al strength or tem­per­a­ture sta­bil­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al. In addi­tion, increased require­ments for mate­ri­als are often also asso­ci­at­ed with increased mate­r­i­al costs and the choice of mate­ri­als is nar­rowed down.

It there­fore makes sense to coor­di­nate the actu­al min­i­mum require­ments based on the appli­ca­tion sit­u­a­tion along the sup­ply chain. Thus, in case of doubt, the use of an overqual­i­fied mate­r­i­al, and thus high­er mate­r­i­al costs, can be avoid­ed and a pos­si­ble com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage can be ruled out.