Coatings Based on Phosphate Cements for Fire Protection of Steel Structures.

Fire events in buildings can cause losses to human life and important material damage, therefore a great deal of attention is paid nowadays to fire prevention. Buildings based on steel structures are especially affected in the event of a fire, due to the important loss of load-bearing capability when steel is heated at temperatures higher than 500 °C. Therefore, one possible method to mitigate the deleterious effect of fire is to protect steel structures from direct heating by applying protective coatings. In this paper, the ability of magnesium phosphate cement (MPC), based on dead burned magnesite and calcium magnesium phosphate cement (CMPC) coatings, to protect a steel substrate was assessed. CMPCs were obtained by mixing partially calcined dolomite with a KH