Fire Rated Curved Walls

V-Cut Flexiboard offers opportunities to build dynamic curved walls with tight radii including a fire rating.

One of the frequently asked questions we receive is will our Flexiboard provide a fire rating. The simple answer is we do not know but as we are removing a part of the board to enable it to flex we have to assume there will be some detrimental effect. However, that is not to say that a fire rating cannot be achieved by other means. There are “blankets” such as Firefly manufactured by TBA Textiles and the Envirograf range from Intumescent Systems used as cavity barriers that provide passive fire protection and if these are introduced between the studs, installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions, the wall will have a fire protection. For the structural integrity of the wall and to reduce the effect of thermal transmission from one side of the wall to the other through the Flexiboards, we consider the studs need to be sandwiched with plasterboard strips to insulate them.

This fire rated curved plasterboard wall construction is not a tested solution. The individual elements such as the fire blanket are tested so we have confidence in their application. However, we are not aware from our market research in the UK that there is any curved drywall partition that has been fire tested irrespective of its construction and producing one with radii down to 100mm would be deemed unachievable by most manufacturers. V-Cut opens possibilities to do exactly that!