GRP offshore - applications and design for fire

摘要

Glass reinforced plastic members have a number of attractions as structural members, particularly in offshore applications. A primary hindrance to their more widespread use is their perceived poor performance in fire and at elevated temperature. This paper summarises some recent research and provides some indicative results for the performance of pipes, gratings and stringer panel walls at elevated temperature. These give grounds for optimism regarding the use of GRP pultrusions as gratings and members of wall panels. It may be noted here that the examples given all involved relatively thin composite material. Thicker composites generally show a significantly better performance in fire because they tend to form a protective char and then burn away rather slowly as a result of the endothermic reaction. In practice, the most realistic scenarios for fire water systems involve pipes under conditions of empty or stagnant water followed by flowing water. The stagnant water condition is advantageous and unprotected pipes of appropriate wall thickness are clearly viable when they are maintained in this state. It has been shown that, in medium or high water flow conditions, GRE pipes can last for extended periods in fire with little or no further damage after the quasi-steady state condition has been achieved.