Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2024-07-22 Origin: Site
From the start of 21st century, plastic flooring became very popular due to its very outstanding waterproof and durable performance. However, more and more people find that some extreme environment such as very hot or cold weather will destroy its inner structure. PVC materials will expand and shrink based on temperature high variation. Thus people start to seek a flooring than can provide a better stability to fit various environment and areas. Then MGO flooring was invented.
MGO flooring does not use plastic and wood as is basic materials. It mainly consists of mineral substances. Manufacture will add few wood fibers as well to make the flooring not become too fragile. MGO flooring’s structure is very similar to traditional laminate flooring. It also has wear paper, decor paper and balance paper. The only difference is the core. Laminate flooring core is made of HDF, which is produced by wood fibers, plant fibers and glue. While mineral flooring core is integrated by physical reflecting without glue.
As its name shows, MGO flooring core is mainly made of mineral substances such as MgO, MgCl2 and MgSO4. Every manufacture will use different ratio during production. Due to its mineral core, it has many unique characteristics.
As it is made of inorganic mineral substances, it has a good resistance to bacterium and mould. Its anti-termite level can reach Level 10, which is very suitable for South East Asia countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.
Not like traditional plastic flooring, MGO flooring does not contain any PVC content. It entirely avoid VOC releasing, which is very friendly to human’s health.
There are also many other advantages such as scratch resistant, recyclable and so on. Regardless of these, MGO flooring has the most outstanding fire resistant performance. Thus many manufacturers and customers also call it as ‘Super Fire Resistant Flooring’.
Traditional solid wood flooring and laminate can not prevent burning and damage from fire because wood fiber is easily flammable. Though MGO flooring has few wood fiber, it only occupies a little ratio and is wrapped by many mineral substances in the core. Mineral substances are inorganic and is hard to burn, Then a fire resistant test is required to assess its performance. After many tests, Protex MGO flooring can reach up to A2fl-S1 Level. Actually there are three tests standard to represent its fire resistant performance and show final level. Let me introduce the first and main important one—flammable test. Please take a look at below testing result sheet.
From the sheet we can easily find that A1fl and A2fl belongs to ‘Non-combustible’. And maybe you will have the question that what does ‘S1’ mean in ‘Afl-S1’. It is smoke test result, and smoke emission range is considered to determine its flammability. It ranges from S1 to S3, and S1 is the best. Here is a sheet for your reference.
There is also another test called droplets test. When the laboratory is testing construction products’ fire resistance, totally these will be divided into three parts:
①Construction products (exclude flooring and linear pipe)
②Flooring
③Linear piper (thermal insulation function)
Commonly the laboratory will define A1,A2, B......F to describe the part ①, A1fl, A2fl, Bfl......Ffl to describe the part ② and A1L, A2L, BL......FL to describe the part ③. And droplets test is only used for part ③. It uses D0 to D2 to determine its degree of flammable resistance.
There is also another test called droplets test. When the laboratory is testing construction products’ fire resistance, totally these will be divided into three parts:
①Construction products (exclude flooring and linear pipe)
②Flooring
③Linear piper (thermal insulation function)
Commonly the laboratory will define A1,A2, B......F to describe the part ①, A1fl, A2fl, Bfl......Ffl to describe the part ② and A1L, A2L, BL......FL to describe the part ③. And droplets test is only used for part ③. It uses D0 to D2 to determine its degree of flammable resistance.
During the flammable test, which is specially for flooring and some other construction materials, three key points will be paid attention to in order to represent the final result:
1_Critical heat flux
2_Flame spread distance
3_The integral of smoke obscuration
The first key point is the most significant, we call it ‘CHF’ simply. It represents the ability that flooring can prevent heat from passing through the flooring. And the higher the CHF is, the better thermal insulation performance it has. The second key point is called as ‘Fs’ simply, which will be used together with the first one to assess comprehensively. Here is a sheet to give you a brief introduction to CHF and Fs representing.
No product will be perfect without any weakness, and so is MGO flooring. Though it has excellent fire resistant performance, it is not 100% waterproof and will cause a phenomenon called ‘Anti-Halogen’ when laying in humid environment. It is because MGO flooring has MgCl2 content, and the inner Cl element will absorb moisture from air or ground and cause chemical reflecting with each other. After a while, the flooring overlay will appear many water droplets. Sometimes it will even integrate and become a big beach. This phenomenon will seriously influence the flooring substrate’s stability and then start to deform and crack.
In order to solve this problem, it is important to control substrate’s content of Cl. Furthermore, if the flooring has too much MgSO4 content, the substrate will become brittle and easy to damage when is impacted by heavy things. Thus, Protex tried to research and test to seek a better ratio of all mineral substances. Finally, a new upgraded type of MGO flooring was invented and tested successfully in the first half of this year. It is called ‘MFC flooring’, full name is Mineral Fiber Compound. MFC flooring is made of same materials with original MGO flooring but has different ratio. It keeps a balance between MgCl2 and MgSO4. After many tests and referring to other standard files, Protex found that when Cl ratio is less than 5%, anti-halogen will not happen easily.
MFC flooring has same advantages with MGO flooring. Protex has made a comprehensive test for MFC flooring based on various kinds of aspects such as size stability, locking strength and formaldehyde releasing. Here is a brief TDS (Technical Data Sheet) for your reference.
Let us find some important data from it. In many indexes of durability, locking strength should be thought highly of because click locking system is very important in all flooring that used click locking to install. From the sheet, we can see that the transverse joint critical locking strength can reach up to 369N, which is a very good testing data.
In laboratory, personnel will use the tensile testing machine to test it. This machine will give a strength and become larger and larger until the click locking is broken. Then record its critical strength, which represents its locking firmness.
Let me show it more clearly by the below testing chart. This chart compares different flooring’s testing results. From the chart, it is obviously that MFC flooring can withstand larger strength from the machine while other types of flooring have been broken. This performance gives MFC flooring excellent durability so that it will have a longer lifespan.
Over all, MFC flooring as the new generation of MGO flooring, is becoming a brand-new and competitive flooring in the market. If you want to know more about it, it is a good idea to follow us so that you can easily catch any new products and info from Protex. For one new product, we will do workshop production and laboratory performance testing again and again because Protex always uphold the rigorous attitude to every product.
