Antimicrobials
These agents are added during the compounding process to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungus on products used in moist environments. Microbial growth can shorten the product life of plastic parts and can manifest itself as odor, discoloration, loss of properties, or loss of function.
Weather Testing
Weather testing helps ensure that materials and products meet their expected functionality and lifetime even in extreme weather conditions.
The three main types of weather testing include:
Natural Outdoor Testing
This form exposes the material to sun and weather directly. Two benchmark climates are typically used for products sold in the US: Arizona (hot and dry) and Florida (hot and moist). Other sites can be used to simulate other climates. Natural outdoor testing usually isn't the most effective method due to time and logistics.
Accelerated Outdoor Testing
Uses natural sunlight plus the use of mirrors and other devices to intensify the natural environmental effects. These methods can obtain useful results at least eight times faster than with real-time weathering.
Laboratory QUV Testing
Uses a QUV weathering testing machine with specialized environmental chambers and artificial light sources that simulate outdoor weather conditions including rain, sunlight and heat. In a few days or weeks, this form of testing can reproduce the damage that occurs over months or years outdoors.
Technical experts strongly advise a combination of lab testing that is validated by real-time outdoor exposures. This helps achieve both goals of good correlation to service performance and short test times.
