Accelerated weathering device for service life prediction for organic coatings.pdf

Test Equipment Accelerated weathering device for service life prediction for organic coatings Samuel Brunner, Peter Richner, Ulrich Mu?ller, Olga Guseva* EMPA, Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research, Laboratory for Corrosion and Materials Integrity, U?berlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Du?bendorf, Switzerland Received 24 June 2004; accepted 4 August 2004 /locate/polytestAbstract A new weathering device was designed and constructed for conducting accelerated tests on coatings for life data analysis. The commercial device was equipped with eight separate thermally insulated chambers, where eight weathering tests can be carried out simultaneously. The following stress types important for polymer ageing can be controlled in the apparatus: UV, temperature, humidity and pollutants. The apparatus, together with the Service Life Prediction methodology, have already been successfully tested for the degradation of aircraft coatings regarding loss of gloss, where sulfuric acid aerosol was used to simulate the post-eruption stratosphere conditions. Instead of sulfuric acid aerosol, acid rain, sodium chloride or other salts or gaseous pollutants could be added. This is, as far as we know, a truly unique instrument and it opens many new opportunities for the future of artificial weathering of coatings. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Coatings; Weathering; Accelerated tests; Service life prediction; Sulfuric acid aerosol1. Introduction The goal of coating weathering is to predict whether or not a given coating is durable enough to satisfy the service life demand. The weathering at the service conditions (natural exposure) usually takes a long time of several years for modern coatings. To save time and money at the stage of developing new formulations, accelerated testing has widely been used in the coating industry for more than 100 years [1]. Devices for artificial weathering of coatings are widely used to simulate the environmental parameters su