Fire test on the ePan Slim heating panel for stretch ceilings

A heating panel lives in a closed space

ePan Slim sits above a stretch fabric, in a plenum nobody will reopen. That volume is closed, it is not ventilated, and it holds air, cables and insulation. It is that context which justifies the test, far more than the likelihood of a flame ever reaching a panel fitted up there.

What the panel puts at stake

The panel combines a carbon heating film with an extruded polystyrene core. Two materials of very different nature, bonded to one another. The test puts them through it together, in the real assembly, because that is how they behave in a fire.

What we watch

How the bond holds under the flame, whether the fire travels from one edge of the panel to the other, and whether droplets form. The result decides the installation configurations that are permitted, particularly in buildings open to the public, where the stretch fabric placed in front has to carry a classification of its own.

The insulating core is the subject of a separate test, presented on the page devoted to the panel insulation. The complete heated stretch ceiling system is described on the heated radiant stretch ceiling page.

Why the plenum is treated as a volume of its own

A stretch ceiling creates a second volume above the first, with its own temperature and its own air movement. Our method consists in closing it and insulating it so that it works for the room rather than against it. The consequence is that you have to know what goes in there: whatever is in it stays for the life of the ceiling.