Ignifugación de perfiles de pultrusión curados mediante radiación ultravioleta

Composites are on the strategic agendas of all manufacturers of transport sector (automobile, industrial vehicle, bus, train ...) and civil infrastructure. The development of new manufacturing processes such as out of die ultraviolet (UV) cured pultrusion can realise many concepts that are currently unfeasible. Therefore, it is essential that composites for automotive, transport or civil infraestructure present excellent fire resistance properties, particularly for structural applications. There are multiple strategies to improve the fire resistance of composites, but the peculiarities of the UV pultrusion process require the use of systems that allow the transmission of UV light through the material, and ensure a fast curing of the profile at the exit of the die to prevent expansion problems. Hence, different ignifugant strategies have been studied in this work: fillers or additives (alumina tri-hydrate, ATH), reactive compounds (ammonium polyphosphate, APP) and intumescent coatings. After analysing the different flame retardant strategies, it has been concluded that all the strategies improve the fire resistance capacity with respect to the base formulation, being the ATH and the intumescent coating the ones that present greater fireproof capacity.