In the steel forest of modern buildings and industrial facilities, countless cables are densely intertwined like the nervous system of the human body. When a fire in a high-rise apartment in Dubai in 2022 caused the spread of ordinary cables, engineers around the world once again focused on the flame retardant technology of cables. The accident that caused tens of millions of dollars has revealed a cruel reality: in the face of fires, ordinary cables often become fatal fuses. Fire retardant cables are the core technology in the field of electrical safety, and their importance is no less than the fire design of building structures. This special cable can maintain a complete structure in the flames, effectively curb the spread of the fire, and strive for precious time for personnel evacuation and fire rescue. It is an indispensable “lifeline” in the modern safety protection system. In the field of super high-rise buildings, the application of flame retardant cables is directly related to the ability of disaster prevention and control. In the power supply system of Shanghai Central Building, all vertical cables use Class B1 flame retardant standard, and each meter cable contains more than 300g inorganic flame retardant filler. This design allows the 20-storey cable shaft to spread the speed of the fire spread to 1/5 of the conventional building in the simulated fire test. The flame retardant optical cable used in the intelligent building, its special sheath material will foam and expand when burning, forming a thermal insulation layer with a diameter of 3 times the original size, effectively protecting the internal optical fiber from being damaged. The rail transit system has more stringent requirements for the flame retardant performance of cables. The flame retardant cable used in the subway tunnel must be certified HL3 in the EN 45545-2 standard, which means that when the cable is burned in an 800 °C flame, the smoke density does not exceed 0.5m²/s per minute. Siemens, Germany, specially developed a special flame retardant cable for the Munich subway. It adopts a double-layer mica belt wrap structure. In the combustion test, the light transmittance of the flue gas has always remained above 80%, which greatly improves the visibility in the tunnel environment.
Post time: Apr-08-2025
