Multifunctional Barriers for Flexible Structure

Available fire retardant fillers are reviewed with reference to their mechanism of action, both as fire retardants and smoke suppressant additives. Means for enhancing their efficiency are considered using flame retardant synergists and nanoparticulate filler variants of magnesium hydroxide, hydrotalcite and boehemite.

Textile materials can be exposed to contamination with microbes (bacteria, fungi, algae) during production, usage or storage. The microbial attack of textiles leads to quality losses due to changes of colour and appearance or to reduction in strength and can result in unpleasant odour formation. Moreover, since microbes absorb to textiles there is a risk of contamination and infection.

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.

Electrostatics (also known as static electricity) is the branch of physics that deals with the forces exerted by a static (i.e. nonchanging) electric field upon charged objects. Electrostatics involves the buildup of charge in objects due to contact between mostly-nonconductive surfaces. These charges are generally built up through the flow of electrons from one object to another. These charges then remain in the object until a force is exerted that causes the charges to balance: e.g., the familiar phenomenon of a static ‘shock’ is caused by the neutralization of charge built up in the body from contact with nonconductive surfaces.

An overview of the characteristics of nano-particles and of the nanocomposites structure is reported. During combustion, the nano-fillers, accumulating on the surface of the burning polymer, build up an inorganic barrier that reduces the heat and mass transfer between the polymer and the flame. Besides the formation of a protective barrier on the surface of the burning polymer, a catalytic charring action is proposed for the mechanism of fire retardancy of nano-fillers. The evolution of the nano-composites morphology on heating is also discussed.

Plasma technologies offer a wide spectrum of possible treatments of materials. The main advantages of these technologies in comparison to the conventional wet chemistry approaches are: they are dry processes. By cold plasmas it is possible to modify the superficial functional characteristics of any materials. This contribution aims to provide a brief overview on non-equilibrium plasma technologies which are surface modification processes which result in surface material layers that retain the inherent advantages of the substrates while providing controlled surface modification. In this paper, we will also present some aspects of barrier films using organosilicon thin coatings on polymeric substrates to protect pharmaceuticals and food products from oxygen. These coatings proved also to be efficient barriers towards diffusion of other small penetrants such as moisture, as also aroma losses. The versatility of these coatings has led to new applications including fire retardant coatings acting as thermal and mass transfer barriers and opens considerable potential for advancing future technologies.

Textile materials are used for a variety of dry and wet filtration processes allowing either the increase of the purity of the material filtered or the recovery of solid particles. Typical examples for textile-based filtration processes are air filtration, process filtration (e.g. solid–liquid separation), industrial effluent treatment or dehydration of sewage sludges.

Non-woven are widely used for manufacturing products with barrier properties, due to their easiness to process are relatively low cost of final products. This chapter provides description of different processes available for manufacturing non-woven, parameters influencing on their final barrier properties and proposal of ways to improve their barrier effects.

This chapter presents a survey of reported mechanical models of fabrics, as well as of technologies currently available to confer actuation properties to fabrics. The modelling of base mechanics of fabrics is here reviewed as a useful tool for a proper design of future new compliant actuators capable of being integrated into a textile substrate. The embedding of such devices into fabrics is studied to confer them actuation properties, functional to one or more barrier effects, such as active filtration. To this aim, state-of-the-art technologies for actuation of fabrics are reviewed and discussed in the light of such new applications.

This chapter focuses on the description of a pyrolysis model which can be used for implementation within computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes. The pyrolysis model is available from the literature and includes both thermal heat transfer in the solid phase as well as chemical kinetics. Besides the description of the model, the way how to obtain input parameters is discussed in this chapter and their sensitivity is shown. Finally validation results of the pyrolysis model are given.

Traditional life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of consumer products such as computers, furniture, etc. do not consider the environmental impact of fires involving such products. In so doing, LCA practitioners ignore any benefit from increased resistance to fire through the use of additives as a potential counter-weight to environmental costs of including said chemical. Conventional LCA models include additives and more complex production processes in consumer products only as a cost, i.e. the environmental benefit of the additive is not taken into account. Recently a Fire-LCA model was developed that also includes fires and their impact on the environment. This chapter describes how to perform a Fire-LCA.

An important part of introduction of the construction productive directive (CPD) is the introduction of the so-called Euroclasses for building products. The Euroclasses define the different fire classes within the European harmonised system. The major fire test method in this system for wall and ceiling linings, the so-called SBI test (EN 13823), is, however, an intermediate fire test and requires larger test specimens. This makes it difficult for industry to develop new innovative materials as large amounts of samples are necessary to run the test, which is also more cost expensive. In this chapter, a product development tool for this method will be discussed. The product development tool is a simulation model based on small-scale test data obtained in the cone calorimeter tests. First the model will be explained in this chapter. The next step is to show the validation of the model and give guidance on how to use the model for building materials.

Footwear is designed to provide comfort, pleasure and protect feet from hard and rough surfaces, as well as climate environmental exposure and in some cases aggressive conditions like protective footwear. Actually, consumers expectations and needs demand development of footwear that integrates fashion, emotional desires and real multifunctional performance namely barrier effect to water and other liquids, thermal insulation, fire resistance or microorganisms resistance.

The filtration in the automotive industry is diverse. Many filters are used either for the filtration of air or liquid in the tank, engine or cabine. This paper will focus on air filtration and more specifically on engine air filtration. After a brief presentation of the basic filtration principles, the filtration technologies used in this field of the automotive industry will be reviewed. Then, in a last part, the testing methodologies will be described.