Fire safety regulations, introduced in the1980s in Europe and continuously revised since then, require development of fire retardant chemicals or fire retardant polymer variants. In parallel, recent years have seen emerging environmental issues and new regulations on the sustainability and recyclability of materials, which have put extra pressure on materials scientists to balance fire safety against environmental considerations, including toxicity of emissions and low smoke production.
Fire retardancy of components is an important factor for the overall fire safety of the product. Development of new fire retardant materials requires a greater knowledge of the complex physical and chemical phenomena occurring during combustion of polymers and of the complex chemistry underlying the modes of action of fire retardants. The approach to the design of new fire retardant systems can be theoretical as well, in which modelling can help in developing new materials and/or predicting their behaviours on exposure to heat and/or fire. This Article Collection of the ‘Designed Monomers and Polymers’ journal aims to gather papers and reviews on recent advances in development of fire retardant polymer systems, including of high performance materials.
Articles scopes may cover all types of polymers - namely thermoplastics, thermosets, biomaterials, composites, etc. - and all aspects of material development such as synthesis, processing, characterisation, thermal stability evaluation, fire testing and mathematical modelling.
Designed Monomers and Polymers accepts original research articles. When submitting your article, please select the Article Collection "Fire-Retardant Polymer Materials" from the drop-down menu in the submission system.
Baljinder Kandola is Professor of Materials Fire Science at the University of Bolton, UK. Her research area is fire retardancy of materials ranging from natural and synthetic fibres, textiles, polymers to glass/carbon fibre-reinforced composites. Main activities involve incorporation of reactive components or additives into polymers by melt blending, in-situ polymerisation or as surface treatments and the study of the combustion behaviour of modified polymers. She has published over 220 articles in academic journals and written chapters in a number of books.
