Penetration seals are passive fire protection systems designed to maintain the fire resistance of a building element or section - wall or floor - where services such as cables, cable trays, pipes or ventilation ducts pass through.
The vast number of different building materials and diffrent services and the types of penetrations that can be required leads to a wide variety of different solutions for seals around these service penetrations. The result is that for most of these penetration sealing applications, several alternative solutions with different systems and products can be used - if the combination has been tested.
One of the challenges with sealing penetrations is that certain services (e.g. combustible pipes) will melt in the event of fire, which results in even larger apertures that must be closed immediately. For this type of application, expanding intumescent materials are usually a very effective solution.
