Power Quality

Briefing Paper
www.leonardo-energy.org
February 2007

How fireproof is “fireproof” cable?

Stefan Fassbinder, Leonardo ENERGY

Being responsible for the structural design and technical infrastructure of buildings
with high fire-safety requirements usually means selecting cable and wiring in the
highest fire resistance classes. But what do terms like “fireproof”, “flame retardant”
and “flame resistant” actually mean? Do these products really meet public safety
requirements, or are there other, less well-known technologies that offer greater
safety and that at a lower price?
One of the great advantages of electric current is that it enables relatively large amounts of
energy to be concentrated in very small regions of space and in very short periods of time.
Within a matter of milliseconds, extremely high temperatures can be generated in a highly
constrained region. Indeed good use is made of this effect in arc welding, spark erosion
machining or in electrical ignition devices. Another example is the electric light bulb in which
an extremely high electric power density is present in a very delicate metal filament.
However, the possibility of creating such high concentrations of energy brings with it the risk
that they might arise accidentally, whether as a natural occurrence such as lightning or due
to a fault in a piece of electrical equipment. Should a fault, in particular a short circuit,
develop in a building’s low-voltage distribution system, the cables and wiring can be
subjected to a linear power density of over 20 kW of heat per metre, causing extremely rapid
overheating of the cable. It is therefore essential that appropriate protective measures are
put in place. The introduction of electrical devices as replacements for the open flames that
were once the main source of interior lighting and heating led to a massive reduction in the
fire hazards in residential and commercial buildings. Nevertheless, fire experts estimate that
electric power (excluding lightning damage) still causes around three billion euros of damage
a year – accounting for some ten percent of the total claims made on home content, fire and
building policies.
Tragedies such as the fires at Düsseldorf Airport, the London Underground and in numerous
alpine tunnels, which caused major damage to property and significant injury and loss of life,
have repeatedly drawn public attention to the importance of fire prevention measures when
designing and installing electrical systems. But just when is a fire “caused by electricity”? Is a
cable fire nothing more than a burning cable, or does the term imply a fire that arose
because the cable was electrically, and thus thermally, overloaded? Unfortunately, the term
is not precisely defined.
www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

1 “There’s not one that won’t burn.”

According to a report in the German engineering magazine VDI-Nachrichten on the fire at
Düsseldorf Airport on 11 April 1996 that left 17 people dead, the above quote was what fire
safety experts had to say about the plastic-insulated cables designed for functional integrity
that were used at the airport. While it is true that at any site where public safety is a relevant
concern, the property developer or local building standards will nearly always stipulate the
use of flame-retardant materials, these materials are far from being absolutely non-
combustible. The relevant industrial standards simply state that the insulation materials used
must be highly flame-resistant or self-extinguishing and that the cable will continue to
function for a specified period of time. However, in the event of a fire, it is almost impossible
to predict which chemical reactions will take place within the organic sheathing of a so-called
fireproof cable.

Figure 1: Mineral-insulated cables (Image: LMI Europa Metalli, Fornaci di Barga)

Figure 2: The cable and wiring technique is no more difficult than with conventional cables –
merely different (Image: Sachverständigenbüro Karl-Heinz Otto, www.sv-otto.de)

The key requirement when constructing or renovating a building must therefore be to prevent
cable fires, i.e. any form of burning cable. Perhaps surprisingly, cables able to prevent a fire
from actually starting irrespective of whether the ignition energy comes from the electrical
current within the conductor or is applied externally have been available on the market for
many years. These mineral-insulated cables (fig. 1) do not age, emit neither smoke nor
gases if exposed to fire, are completely non-combustible and constitute a minor or even non-
existent fuel load, depending on whether they are supplied uncovered or with an optional low

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

smoke and fume (LSF) sheath (fig. 3). Conventionally insulated cables by contrast emit high
levels of smoke when subjected to fire testing such as that described in the French standard
NSF C 32 070 in which the cable is heated in a cylindrical electrical furnace according to an
ISO-standardized heating profile. Figure 4 shows the standardized curve and the actual
temperature profile recorded. It is readily apparent that the ignition of the sheath causes the
temperature to deviate strongly from the target curve. The amount of heat generated by
combustion is so great that the furnace’s thermostatic control is unable to compensate for
the temperature rise. Perhaps for this reason alone the test cable fails prematurely. The
cable is therefore destined to fail in practice.

FIRE PERFORMANCE

FUEL ENERGY FROM CABLES

Comparisons between types of 4 x 15mm² cable
Comparisons between various types of 4 x 15mm² cable

1.00
0.90
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30 negative
0.20
0.10
0.0 PVC/PVC PVC/PVC PVC/PVC Halogen Free Halogen Free Mineral-Insulated Mineral-
Stranded Stranded Cross Linked Cross Linked Cable with LSF Insulated
Solid Polymar Outer Cover
Conductors Conductors Concentric Polymar Bare Cable
Concentric

Figure 3: Fuel loads of a number of different cables types (BICC, Manchester)

Multi Core FR Cable (Without Conduit)

Temperature (°C)
1,200
15 Minutes
1,000 Cable
Failed
920
902
800 842

739
600

400

200 Approximately
65 Minutes
20
0
0 15 30 45 60 75
Time (Minutes)

Figure 4: Target heating curve and actual temperature profile of a fire-resistant plastic-
coated cable (BICC, Manchester)

2 Which would you prefer: a cable “with improved fire

performance” or one that is non-combustible?
Mineral-insulated cables (MI cables) are simple in their construction. They comprise one or
more bare copper conductors embedded in highly compacted magnesium oxide that is
covered by a sheath of copper metal. Magnesium oxide melts at 2800 °C, copper at 1083
°C. Neither material undergoes any physical or chemical transformation below its melting
point, except for the superficial oxidation of the outer copper cladding. There are no toxic
fumes nor decomposition products associated with these materials. MI cables clearly comply
with the functional integrity requirements of class E 90 materials specified in the German
standard DIN 4102 Part 12, as do numerous other conventional cables currently in use.
However, there is a real question regarding the extent to which the standardized test

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

conditions match the actual conditions experienced in a real fire. The German, British and
French test procedures all involve exposing the test sample to a flame with the sample either
freely suspended or mounted on a rigid surface. The procedure set out in the NSF C 32 070
standard also includes exposure to mechanical stress caused by an iron rod of the same
diameter as the cable that falls every 30 seconds onto the cable. However, the rod does not
strike that part of the cable exposed to the flame, but one of its cold ends instead.
The British standard 6387 includes the following variants:
• Category A test: Flame exposure at 650 °C
• Category C test: Flame exposure at 950 °C,
• Category X test: Flame exposure at 650 °C and mechanical shock
• Category Z test: Flame exposure at 950 °C and mechanical shock
• Category W test: Flame exposure at 650 °C and water spray

The standard does not include a test that involves exposing the cable to a flame at a
temperature of 950 °C and to water simultaneously. It seems rather unrealistic to assume
that a fire causing a temperature of 950 °C then drops down to 650 °C before the sprinkler
system triggers, the fire service arrives, or water pipes burst. The mechanical shocks to
which the cable is subjected are limited to vibrating the support surface to which the sample
is mounted; the cable itself remains untouched. It seems more than unlikely that falling
debris, such as ceiling tiles, would only hit the cable tray or conduit and would fail to hit the
cable itself. A further questionable aspect is that each test is performed with a new sample
and never with the same one. This is tantamount to saying that a particular piece of cable
will only be subjected to one such event and would never experience multiple stressing
either simultaneously or sequentially.
The German standard, DIN 4102 Part 12, requires testing of a moderately curved sample
mounted on a support structure, but ignores all other influencing factors and only stipulates
that the sample be exposed to a flame. The typical insulation materials burn off completely in
the first few minutes and even LSF cables emit substantial quantities of smoke. After the
cable sheath has burnt and disintegrated, the only material holding the cable together and
separating the cores from one another is a shell of ash. The test procedure fails to examine
what the consequences would be if these cables were exposed to fire when clamp-mounted
or when bent or kinked within a cable tray or duct. By contrast, mineral-insulated cables
undergo practically no change during the flame exposure test and continue to function even
after being subjected to numerous severe hammer blows.

3 Ignore at your peril: Five-fold increase in resistance

at fire temperatures
i
A few years ago an engineer at a Belgian cable manufacturer that supplies a wide range of
specialist products came across a further deficiency in the relevant standard: Cables “with
improved fire performance” – as the standard cautiously refers to them – get red hot in a fire.
While that may perhaps be stating the obvious, it is often forgotten that this will result in a
significant increase in the conductor’s resistance (fig. 7). The engineer calculated that this
higher resistance could result in a greater voltage drop along the conductor. If, for instance,
an appreciable portion of a lift’s power cable was exposed to fire, the drive motor might not
start, leaving people trapped in a burning building. Another important aspect is that the
higher the temperature, the greater the temperature rise. What is meant by this apparently
redundant statement is the following: A cable at 40 °C that heats up by 40 K when carrying
its rated current, will have a resistance five times greater when the ambient temperature is
950 °C. If the same current flows, the resulting temperature rise will now be 210 K. A rise of
only 133 K would suffice to melt the copper conductor, no matter whether insulated by
magnesium oxide or any other material. The conductors in cables designed to provide
functional integrity in the event of fire should therefore have much larger cross-sectional

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

areas than they do at present. A cable offering functional integrity only under non-critical
conditions is hardly worthy of the name. Up until recently there was no national or
international standard that dealt with this issue. At present only the Belgian standard
RGIE/AREI, article 104, section e4, addresses this point and requires a five-fold increase in
the cross-sectional area of the conductor so that even at 950 °C, the temperature rise will be
no greater than 40 K. Note that this phenomenon will be observed in all cable types whether
mineral-insulated or plastic-insulated. No current test specification requires fire testing of
cables under significant load. If they did, all test samples would fail. The only load connected
during cable testing is a filament lamp that is included simply to indicate functioning and the
moment of failure.
A further problem encountered by the Belgian engineers when investigating this problem
was the different approaches that can be adopted to compute the temperature-dependence
of the resistance of copper. One approach is to apply a rearranged version of the formula
that is quoted in the EN 60742 standard and is used to compute the temperature rise in
wound components from measurement of the change in resistance:
RT = R20 [1 + α (T − 293K )]
RT is the resistance at temperature T, R20 the resistance at 20°C (293 K) and is the
temperature coefficient. The value of for copper is 0.0039. This formula ignores the
coefficient , which as it is multiplied by the square of the temperature rise can be neglected
when the temperature difference is small:

[
RT = R20 1 + α (T − 293K ) + β (T − 293K ) 2 ]
The third approach makes use of the Wiedemann-Franz power law:
1.16
T
RT = R20
T20
The latter method is the most accurate of the three according to the Belgian team. Figure 5
shows that for most technical applications, the deviations between the three curves are
negligible at typical operating temperatures, but significant differences are apparent at the
temperatures experienced in a fire. Despite being included in the standard, the linear model
(i.e. without the coefficient ) is clearly unsuitable for calculating the temperature
dependence of the resistance at fire temperatures.

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

5,5

5,0

R/R 20°C
4,5

4,0

3,5

3,0

2,5

2,0
calculated according to EN 60742
1,5 calculated including square component
calculated using exponential formula
1,0
T
0,5
0°C 200°C 400°C 600°C 800°C 1000°C
Figure 5: Temperature dependence of the resistance of copper, calculated using three
different methods

There is at least one cable manufacturer that exceeds the specifications of the standards by
testing for the, albeit unlikely, case that the conductor is overloaded. In this test, a mineral-
insulated and a plastic-insulated sample each with a conductor cross section of 2.5 mm² are
connected in series and subjected to a current of 200 A. Depending on the particular
structure of the sample, the plastic-sheathed cable either ignites suddenly along its entire
length or one of its cores melts. But even before this occurs, large quantities of smoke have
escaped from both ends of the cables, smoke which can be ignited by the smallest spark.
The MI cable, by contrast, has withstood numerous repeat tests without damage, with the
same test sample cable being used for months at a time.

4 Corrosive decomposition products released in a fire

can attack the conductor
A further problem was uncovered and studied by the Belgian engineers1. At the
temperatures experienced in a fire some of the organic insulation materials attack the
conductor resulting in its chemical decomposition and the, in some cases, highly significant
reduction in the conductor cross-section. The company worked on the problem and
developed an acceptable solution. One solution would of course have been to use mineral-
insulated cables, but the company simply did not have this type of cable in its product
portfolio. One reason why MI cable is so unknown in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
could well be that it is not manufactured in any of these countries and there is no tradition of
working with it, despite the fact that it has been standardized in the DIN VDE regulation
0284-1. In fact, this specification was re-issued in November 2002 as the European standard
EN 60702-1. In other countries, MI cable has been in use since before the Second World
War and has been deployed with great success in tunnels, railway stations, airports,
underground railway tunnels and other sites with enhanced safety requirements. The use of
MI cable is widespread in Great Britain, Italy and Canada and it can be purchased from

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

suppliers in these countries. A list of suppliers is available from the German Copper Institute
(DKI).

5 Safety: You get what you pay for – or do you?

Mineral-insulated cable is no more expensive than conventional flame-resistance plastic
cable, in fact it is often considerably cheaper. While the price of conventional cable in the
functional integrity class E30 is usually lower than that of MI cable, the cost of E90 cable is
considerably higher. In fact this price difference has made MI cable the material of choice in
a number of cases. There have been occasions when both types of cable have been
installed. Which material was used depended on which was cheaper for a particular cable
gauge. Of course this type of argument compares only material and installation costs, with
no consideration given to the costs that would be incurred should a fire break out. The lower
material price is anyway large enough to compensate for the possibly higher installation
costs. While it is true that metal-sheathed cable can be rather stiff, it only needs to be
installed once. If a fire is not too severe, the mineral-insulated cables are usually still in such
good condition that no remedial work on the installation is required. Despite their formal
“functional integrity” classification, the “fireproof” plastic-insulated cables predominantly used
today are so badly damaged by fire that they have to be replaced along their entire length
and not just at those points where the cable was actually damaged by fire. Whether
removing the damaged and in all probability highly contaminated cabling and other affected
building parts and then reinstalling new cable is less effort than the once-only installation of
copper-clad MI cable is a question whose answer is probably now be self-evident. Specialist
tools and techniques for installing and connecting MI cables are available and form part of an
electrical technician’s basic training in countries that use this type of cabling (see fig. 2). The
stiffness of MI cable can also be an advantage for certain types of installation work. In many
cases there is no longer a need for cable conduits and cable clamps and supports can be set
much farther apart. The cables are also practically inelastic. Any shaping or deformation of
the cable is thus permanent, in contrast to the elastic polymer-insulated cables where
installation is sometimes not unlike trying to tame a snake. The occasional disadvantage of
greater stiffness is often outweighed by the significantly smaller total cross-sectional area of
MI cables. Because the individual cores do not need to be individually insulated, the
diameter of an MI cable is on average between one half and two-thirds of that of a plastic-
insulated cable with the same number of cores and the same core cross-section (fig. 6).

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

Comparison of Dimensions

Cable diametre
13.2 mm

Typical fire resistant cable

3 * 1.5mm2 with protective earth
Cable comprises sheath and core insulation of organic insulant with glass fibre or mica filler and flame protection foil

Cable diametre
7.2 mm

Mineral-insulated cable
2 * 1.5mm2 with copper sheath as protective earth
Cable comprises copper sheath and mineral insulant, optional outer sheath of LSF plastic

Figure 6: Comparison of the size of conventional and mineral-insulated fireproof cable

(BICC, Manchester)

If mineral-insulated cables are installed, there is no risk that a fire could lead to
environmental contamination. Plastic-insulated cables, on the other hand, can produce
hydrochloric acid that can diffuse into concrete masonry corroding the reinforcing steel. In
some cases, relatively minor cable fires have made demolition of the building necessary.
While the newer halogen-free cables avoid this hazard, they still release smoke and carbon
monoxide when exposed to fire. According to fire safety experts, most fire victims do not die
in the flames, but lose their orientation because of the smoke and are then killed by carbon
monoxide poisoning. Magnesium oxide is completely unreactive and can be disposed of as
an environmentally neutral waste product, and the copper can of course be recovered and
recycled almost indefinitely.

6 Optimal EMC performance…

The copper cladding can, may and indeed should be used as the protective earth conductor.
The cross-sectional area of the copper cladding is so large that buildings with MI cable
installed are automatically equipped with a equipotential bonding network of extremely low
impedance. This is a major benefit from both a safety and an EMC point of view, especially
since the ever increasing number of nonlinear loads are creating more and more current
harmonics in the earthing system. And irrespective of whether the currents and voltages are
linear or distorted, MI cable provides a fully shielded system from which no stray electrical or
magnetic fields can emanate – a feature that will no doubt help to placate the concerns of
those over-sensitized by the electrosmog controversy.

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

7 …and even aesthetically preferable in some cases

The significantly smaller cable diameter and the fact that the copper colour often blends in
well in certain surroundings have made mineral-insulated cable the material of choice in
some historically valuable buildings and museums where wiring has to surface mounted to
avoid drilling into historical structures (fig. 7 and fig. 8).

Figure 7: Mineral-insulated cables are inconspicuous when installed on historical Italian

facades and in British libraries

Figure 8: Efforts to protect this historic monument would have been ruined had thick, bright-
orange plastic-insulated fireproof cable been installed (Image: LMI Europa Metalli, Fornaci di
Barga / Italien)

© European Copper Institute

www.l eonar do- ener gy. or g

8 Summary
Current standards for “cables with improved fire performance” have been carefully
formulated with an eye to what is technically feasible so that manufacturers of plastic-
insulated cables can just about manage to comply with the requirements of the standard if
they make use of specialized polymers. Given this situation, it is not unreasonable to
consider using MI cable when designing and dimensioning the wiring for areas with
enhanced safety requirements, as this would go well beyond the specifications in present
national and international standards. A first step in this direction was taken in CentrO, a new
ii
shopping centre in Oberhausen, where 100 km of mineral-insulated cable were installed .
European and international standards organizations should also follow the example set by
the Belgian standard and as soon as possible (which experience shows is not that fast)
revise their specifications to include greater conductor cross-sections in order to counteract
the significant increase in conductor resistance when cables are exposed to fire.
However, standards are not laws and the law is clear that no matter what the standards
might say, trained and qualified electricians must act responsibly and are responsible for
their actions. This is tantamount to requiring the use of the best available technology
whenever and wherever this would improve personal safety.

i
www.eupen.com
ii
Reference: HTW Hetzel, Tor-Westen & Partner Ingenieurgesellschaft KG, www.htw-
ingenieure.de

© European Copper Institute