ABSTRACT

Cables are one of the main technological objects which represent sources of ignition and fire risks. In particular, they are a common cause of fire in transportation, industries, and power plants. Hence, fire performance for cable applications is of prime interest. The nature of polymers, associated flame retardants (FRs) systems, and cable construction govern the fire risks. Consequently, various fire and resistance tests reported in this chapter are applied for the different sectors of application. However, before rating through standard tests, cable and particularly sheath materials are often tested using small-scale lab tests and correlations between both kinds of tests have to be established, in particular for promising new bench-scale tests and devices. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the main polymers used in cable applications and the corresponding FRs. Advantages and limitations of the usual FRs are presented. Since the cable industry can be considered as a pioneer industry regarding the use of nanoparticles, an improvement of the global fire performance of cables could be achieved through specific mechanisms without loss of other functional properties. Nevertheless, the use of nanotechnology is among the main environmental issues such as the limitation of toxic degradation products and the waste management of end-of-life cables.