Rising demand to reduce weight in some components of warship and high speed vessels has forced designers to consider the use of lightweight materials such as aluminium and FRP composites in areas traditionally served by steels. These materials have, in general, a significantly lower resistance to fire, requiring significant extra protection to meet the required standards for fire safety. This paper explores the potential of an alumino-silicate geopolymer, already considered for use in aircraft and other transport applications, as an inorganic matrix in fire resistant marine composites. Thermal properties for the material are established following the procedure outlined by Gibson et al. [1]. Using a small scale, low cost technique for measuring the fire resistance of composites, a propane burner was used to deliver a constant heat flux to a variety of samples. The data collected was used to establish the values for the effective thermal conductivity, κ, and thermal diffusivity, β, during exposure to fire. The thermal conductivity of the geopolymer was found to be 0.123 J/msK and the thermal diffusivity was 1.42E-08 m~2/s.
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