TY - JOUR A1 - Morys, Michael A1 - Illerhaus, Bernhard A1 - Sturm, Heinz A1 - Schartel, Bernhard T1 - Revealing the inner secrets of intumescence: Advanced standard time temperature oven (STT Mufu+)—my‐computed tomography approach JF - Fire and Materials N2 - Intumescent coatings have been used for fire protection of steel for decades, but there is still a need for improvement and adaptation. The key parameters of such coatings in a fire Scenario are thermal insulation, foaming dynamics, and cohesion. The fire resistance tests, large furnaces applying the standard time temperature (STT) curve, demand coated full‐scale components or intermediate‐scale specimen. The STT Mufu+ (standard time temperature muffle furnace+) approach is presented. It is a recently developed bench‐scale testing method to analyze the performance of intumescent coatings. The STT Mufu+ provides vertical testing of specimens with reduced specimen size according to the STT curve. During the experiment, the foaming process is observed with a high‐temperature endoscope. Characteristics of this technique like reproducibility and resolution are presented and discussed. The STT Mufu+ test is highly efficient in comparison to common tests because of the reduced sample size. Its potential is extended to a superior research tool by combining it with advanced residue analysis (μ‐computed tomography and scanning electron microscopy) and mechanical testing. The benefits of this combination are demonstrated by a case study on 4 intumescent coatings. The evaluation of all collected data is used to create performance‐based rankings of the tested coatings. KW - Bench‐scale fire testing KW - Computed tomography KW - Fire resistance KW - Intumescence KW - Residue analysis KW - Standard time temperature furnace PY - 2017 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2426 SN - 0308-0501 SN - 1099-1018 VL - 41 IS - 8 SP - 927 EP - 939 PB - Wiley AN - OPUS4-42754 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -