With the widespread use of LED screens, more fire hazards are caused by quality issues and design defects. It puts people exposed to the risk of personal safety threats and losing financial interests. As the accident increasingly happens, people think over the improvement of an LED display by carrying out more in-depth analysis.
This article will discuss the strategy of fire protection from five aspects of LED display. They are the LED display design solutions, manufacturing quality control, on-site construction quality control, normal operation, and maintenance.
Generally, we set the power consumption of the LED display at 80% as the screen itself can really reach. The maximum capacity of the power supply should be 80% of the actual maximum output power capacity of itself. The maximum load of the power distribution should be lowered to 80% of the maximum transmission power of the cable. (Under a difficult working environment, we suggest making the circuit 1.4 times over the maximum capacity of the power distribution. It is the principle of selecting cable types and making them reasonably close to workable parameters.). Please pay special attention to the grounding design so as to avoid lightning fire in thunderstorm weather.
Of course, the fire must be the direct factor that causes the fire disaster. The reason why LED displays cause fire hazard is that lots of heat partially accumulates strongly within the screen system. Thus, it’s significant to have well-functioned heat dissipation for the screen system. Outdoor LED displays often come with a great amount of heat. There are two common ways of thermal dissipation available– by a fan or air conditioner. It’s up to the max thermal dissipation. Besides, designing a scientific thermal balance solution is important to the entire solution of heat dissipation, which could often be ignored or taken not seriously. Thermal dissipation aims to dissipate the heat of the entire system in a uniform way so that we can lower the risk of fire disaster caused by heat over-accumulated.
The cables coming with a protective sheath could cause a fire if not being used in the correct way. When selecting the type, we should pay more attention to the tolerance of the temperature that the sheath can hold. Only the high-quality products in compliance with the safety code can ensure reliability and stability. Always keep in mind that, nothing is more important than the circuit to protect the electronic products from fire.
About power supply. It’s a wise option to choose products with safety certification concerning a power supply. Their effective conversion rate secures a safer and more stable power load, even we exposed them to a high-temperature working environment. To avoid overloading the harmonic current and causing fires, large-scale LED displays have to be configured with the built-in PLC circuit switch.
About protective materials. Aging issues could happen on the aluminum-plastic panel of the general outdoor screen if we expose them to various temperatures and rainy environments. When the humidity increases, there is a fire disaster caused by short circuit trouble because the rain or the moisture penetrates inside the screen. When it comes to choosing materials for the external protective structure of the screen, most of the products with high fire-retardant grade in the market are configured with fireproof aluminum-plastic plate, allowing for excellent resistance for fire and solid flame retardation.
About plastic protection kit. The main material for LED module mask and back cover requires flame retardant PC glass fiber material allowing for fire anti-flaming and exposure to various temperature environments for the long term. No deform and embrittlement. Besides, with the glue bonding, it can prevent the rainwater from the external environment from penetrating into the interior and avoid causing short trouble and fire disaster.
Of course, the fire must be the direct factor that causes the fire disaster. The reason why LED displays cause fire hazard is that lots of heat partially accumulates strongly within the screen system. Thus, it’s significant to have well-functioned heat dissipation for the screen system. Outdoor LED displays often come with a great amount of heat. There are two common ways of thermal dissipation available– by a fan or air conditioner. It’s up to the max thermal dissipation. Besides, designing a scientific thermal balance solution is important to the entire solution of heat dissipation, which could often be ignored or taken not seriously. Thermal dissipation aims to dissipate the heat of the entire system in a uniform way so that we can lower the risk of fire disaster caused by heat over-accumulated.
Generally, the outdoor LED display will be installed complicated working environment, so efficient all-round protection to the display is necessary to advert external flame falling down to the display. There was an accident caused by the metal droplet from a welding construction site nearby slashing down inside the screen before, which should raise the engineers’ awareness of the surroundings.
To secure the reliability of the product at the primary stage, it’s necessary to purchase qualified raw materials in strict accordance with the product name, specification, and quality standard determined in the design scheme. Unqualified raw materials, especially when it comes to the key raw materials related to fire prevention, will risk the screen in fire hazards.
It can cause fire hazards if there is a rosin joint on electronic products. When cables are welded insufficiently, it will result in unexpected fever or fire. Therefore, we should make the welding process strictly proceeded with the standard operation regulations to ensure that the welding quality meets the requirements. The joints of the parts carrying strong current should be welded by hand, avoiding overheat issues.
As similar to the welding issue with existing electronic parts, if there are insufficient joints on welding, it will result in unexpected fever or fire. We should have the pressure welding of cables done in strict accordance with the standard operating procedure so as to secure qualified products. To guarantee the reliability of the crimped cable, it usually sets up pulling force tests for the cables.
By aging test of electronic products helps find out and resolve most of the potential quality hazards effectively. No exception cases, neither for LED displays. It is crucial to strictly implement the aging standards and rules during the production of LED display, which is helpful to work out backup plan for potential risks and secure the quality of the product.
The wrong connection of wiring could expose the screen in danger of fire hazard on spot. Even with well-connected wiring, it will lead to abnormal heat or fire at the joint part because of the unreliable connection.
Cables should be tidied up and smartly remarked. Fires could happen because of the pile-up and entangled power cables.
Protection treatment done for the cable is important to keep the sheath from damage. If the sheath gets damaged accidentally, please replace it with the qualified product in time. Generally, the sheath easily gets ruptured due to moisture, aging, fracture, and electric leakage, which may result in fire.
The maximum brightness and the power consumption of the LED display have been well set up before shipment. It’s not allowed to modify those parameters without professional guides. Or else, it may lead to fire hazards resulting from overloaded power consumption.
In addition, the entire screen system includes large-scale LED displays, video playback, and a control system. So the operation state of the LED display should indicate the state of the whole video control system. It may fail or get abnormal if the signal gets out of control during the long-time operation. Worse, it may result in a fire hazard. Therefore, after the video source and control system stop working or get abnormal, the LED display should be turned off in time to ensure safety.
Professional input devices like LED screens need regular inspection, test, and troubleshoot faults and hidden trouble with professional help. Learned from the Bathtub Curve, we should arrange the inspection every six months for outdoor LED screens in the first two years of delivery. In the following five years, you can arrange the inspection annually. After five years, doing the inspection twice a year is necessary.
Here’s the brief introduction about LED display fire protection certification.
LED display and certain key raw materials requiring fire protection need to meet UL standards. For example, the rubber and the plastic materials need to match UL 94-V0 standard. Regarding the wiring, it has to meet the standard of UL48 rules; for power supply, to pass UL certification is necessary.
When LED display screens, complete display equipment, enters various countries and areas, it needs to meet different fire test standards.
China: comply with GB8624 Classification of Combustion Performance of Building Materials and Products.
USA: comply with ASTM E84 Surface Combustion Performance of Building Materials
Canada: comply with CAN/ULC-S102-10 Test Method for Surface Combustion Characteristics of Building Materials and Accessories
UK: comply with BS476 Fire Resistance Test of Building Materials and Components.
European Union area: comply with EN13501 Determination of Combustion Grade of Building Products
Australia: comply with AS1530 Fire Resistance Test of Building Materials
France: comply with NF P92-507M Grade Standard.
Germany: comply with DIN4102-1: Fire Resistance Grade Test of Building Materials
Refers to the international standard of fireproof test for building materials in case of which there is no independent standard. That is, ISO834-1 Fire-resistance tests– Elements of building construction– Part 1: General requirements.
Some products in Viewpointec by DesignLED have passed UK BS476 and US ASTM E84 test. You are welcome to email us for more information.
