Development of fire retardant composite panels. Part IX. Improvement of fire performance of OSB panel via wood treatment and resin modification with glass fiber, fire retardants and nano-particles
An experiment was conducted to evaluate the fire performance of randomly oriented strand boards manufactured with two fire retardants (FR: CROS 349 and BUDIT 380), two nano-particles (NP: Nanofil®9 and Cloisite 25A), woven glass fiber (WGF) and glass fiber (GF). These materials were only used in wood strands for panel surface layer. Liquid/powder phenol-formaldehyde (PF) combination system was used as binder. In case where the nano-particle was used, it was also incorporated into the surface powder PF resin. All resultant strand boards were evaluated for fire performance in terms of flame advance, panel consumption, insulation value and char index according to ASTM Standard D 3806-98, and mechanical and physical properties of boards such as internal bond (IB) strength, modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE), and 24-h thickness swelling (TS) and water absorption (WA) according to CSA Standard O437.1-93. This study showed that the use of FR, WGF and GF did not seem to have apparent impact on panel performance but NP did in terms of overall panel performance. With respect to all fire properties evaluated, no single treatment appeared to perform consistently better than others. However, laminating strand board with WGF was proven to be the most effective way to protect strand board against flaming in terms of reduced net flame advance and panel consumption. Treatment of strands with two fire retardants appeared to be also a promising method for improving board fire performance next to WGF. The two nano-particles used and the fire retardant BUDIT 380 performed better than other materials with respect to lowered insulation value of strand board. In addition, the two nano-particles and the fire retardant CROS 349 resulted in better fire performance strand board than did other materials in terms of lowered char index.