Abstract
Furniture is globally the major field of application of poly urethane foam polymers and flame retardancy is definitely the major issue for this product-market. The challenge is not only in designing foams with better combustibility resistance to flame spread, but also to define test methods that, even if not representing the risk of stringent fire conditions, could at least be a meaningful indicator of the improvement in the foam combustibility char acteristics.
Europe is now looking forward to a common standard in the nineties. At pres ent some countries, as Italy and the United Kingdom, have defined specific FR test methods and regulations for flexible polyurethane foams to be used by the furniture industry.
This paper deals with flexible polyurethane foam systems especially devel oped for cold molding furniture applications meeting the above mentioned regulations.
Foam flame behaviour is described, together with physical-mechanical prop erties and processing characteristics. Data are compared with those of non-FR containing polyurethane foam. Also smoke emission data were generated, in cluding the evaluation of a smoke suppressant additive.
All the developed products, with the exception of the smoke modified ones, are stable and commercialized as fully formulated, ready to use, systems.
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