Passive Fire Protection
Firestopping and fireproofing products can be ablative in nature. This can mean endothermic materials, or merely materials that are sacrificial and become "spent" over time while exposed to fire such as silicone firestop products. Given sufficient time under fire or heat conditions, these products char away, crumble, and disappear. The idea is to put enough of this material in the way of the fire that a level of fire-resistance rating can be maintained, as demonstrated in a fire test. Ablative materials usually have a large concentration of organic matter that is reduced by fire to ashes. In the case of silicone, organic rubber surrounds very finely divided silica dust (up to 380 m² of combined surface area of all the dust particles per gram of this dust). When the organic rubber is exposed to fire it burns to ash and leaves behind the silica dust with which the product started.
Read more about this topic: Ablation
Famous quotes containing the words passive, fire and/or protection:
“...if you are to gain any great amount of good from the world, you must attain a passive condition of mind. ...it is never to be forgotten that it is the rest of the world and not you that holds the great share of the world’s wealth, and that you must allow yourself to be acted upon by the world, if you would become a sharer in the gain of all the ages to your own infinite advantage.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“The tender skin does not shrink from bayonets, the timid woman is not scared by fagots; the rack is not frightful, nor the rope ignominious. The poor Puritan, Antony Parsons, at the stake, tied straw on his head when the fire approached him, and said, “This is God’s hat.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)