To improve the flame resistance of oriented strand board (OSB) and low-density fiberboard (ceiling tile), a laboratorial study was carried out to coat the commercial OSB panel and ceiling tile with three commercial fire retardant coatings (WT-102, Safe-T-Guard®, RUFR-1000) and ceiling tile with nanoclay 1130E-modified commercial coating/paint. The commercial coating and paint without fire retardants were designed for ceiling tile application. The test results indicated that the 2 wt% nanoclay-modified coating and/or paint could effectively improve the flame resistance of ceiling tile in terms of the short after-flame time according to ASTM D 3801 and the high limited oxygen index (LOI) according to ASTM D 2863. The nanoclay-modified coating and/or paint performed similarly to Safe-T-Guard® regarding both after-flame time and limited oxygen index. In general, the OSB panel coated with RUFR-1000 performed better than those with WT-102 and Safe-T-Guard® in terms of lowered panel consumption, net flame advance, insulation value and char index according to ASTM D 3806. An increase in fire retardant coating rate improved the fire performance of OSB for all three commercial fire retardant coatings.
Full title: Development of fire retardant composite panels. Part IV. Improvement of fire performance of OSB and ceiling tile via surface coating with commercial fire retardant coatings for OSB and ceiling tile and nanoclay-modified coating/paint for ceiling tile