Dynamic Mechanical Characterizations and Road Performances of Flame Retardant Asphalt Mortars and Concretes

To research the dynamic mechanical properties and road performances of flame retardant asphalt mortars and mixtures, four different asphalt mortars/mixtures were prepared: a reference group and three asphalt mortars/mixtures containing composite flame retardant materials(M-FRs) of different proportions. Temperature sweep, frequency sweep, repeated creep test, force ductility test and bending beam rheological test were carried out to research the dynamic mechanical properties of asphalt mortars containing M-FRs; wheeltracking test, low-temperature bending test and freeze-thaw split test were used to study the road performances of asphalt mixtures containing M-FRs. The results show that high-temperature performances of the three flame retardant asphalt mortars improve greatly, while low-temperature cracking resistances decline. Both hightemperature performances and water stabilities of asphalt mixtures containing M-FRs are quite good and exceed the specification requirements. However, their low-temperature performances decline in different degrees. In summary, besides their good flame retardancy, the flame retardant asphalt mortars and mixtures also exhibit acceptable road performance.

Achieving Enhanced Fire Safety of Polyvinyl Chloride Through Rapid Catalytic Carbonization Using a Triple-effect Flame Retardant of Mg(OH)_(2)-ZnO-TiO_(2)

The concept of catalytic flame retardancy by metal ions is considered an efficient flame-retardant method.However,due to the unclear mechanism,the ambiguity of the reaction process and the unknown properties of the products severely limit its application in composite materials.In view of this,we designed a tri-effect composite flame retardant of Mg(OH)_(2)-ZnO-TiO_(2);which not only solves the problem of low flame retardancy efficiency of magnesium hydroxide(MH)but also performs excellently in the evaluation of flame retardancy of polyvinyl chloride(PVC).The limit oxygen index(LOI)increased from 21.5%to 31.1%,and the composite material can be synthesized on a large scale.Through detailed analysis of the condensed phase carbon layer,two different catalytic flame retardant mechanisms were elucidated.This research is expected to provide an important theoretical basis for the development of efficient and environmentally friendly composite flame retardants.

Flame-retardant Wrapped Ramie Fibers towards Suppressing “Candlewick Effect” of Polypropylene/Ramie Fiber Composites

In this work, a flame-retardant polypropylene（PP）/ramie fiber（RF） composite was prepared. The ramie fibers were wrapped chemically by a phosphorus- and nitrogen-containing flame retardant（FR） produced via in situ condensation reaction so as to suppress their candlewick effect. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy（FTIR）, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy（XPS） and scanning electron microscopy（SEM） demonstrated that the ramie fibers wrapped chemically by FR（FR-RF） were obtained successfully. Thermogravimatric test showed that the PP/FR-RF composite had more residue and better thermal stability at high temperatures than the PP/RF composite. Cone calorimeter（CC） results indicated that the peak of heat release rate（PHRR） and total heat release（THR） correspondingly decreased by 23.4% and 12.5% compared with the values of neat PP/RF. The PP/FR-RF composite created a continuous and compact char layer after the combustion. Combining FTIR analysis of char residue after CC test with heat conduction coefficient results, it could be concluded that the charring of FR on RF greatly weakened the candlewick effect of RF, and more char residue in the RF domain facilitated the formation of more continuous and compact char layer in the whole combustion zone, consequently protected PP composites during combustion, resulting in the better flame retardancy of PP/FR-RF composite than that of PP/RF composite.