Aging Conditions' Effect on UV Durability

Publisher Summary This chapter explains aging conditions' effect on UV durability. Efforts to carry out intermaterial substitution in thermoplastic resin industries continue to be driven by economic advantages and performance enhancements. This has forced producers to document performance attributes such as UV durability in an effort to make overall part-life predictions. Participating aggressively in the areas of UV stabilization and accelerated aging has provided one key insights to how factors of aging impact performance. While it is vital to recognize that specific testing or aging conditions have the potential to greatly alter performance measurements, the understanding of mechanistic causes for these phenomena can be a tool to breakthrough performance technology. Moreover, the factors of irradiation level, part temperature and the presence of water spray have been shown to be key aging conditions that affect UV durability. Higher irradiation levels and part temperatures often lead to failure at a lower total light exposure. Furthermore, the presence of water spray has been shown to be antagonistic to the performance of certain stabilizers. Overall, the use of accelerated UV aging methods continues to be required. However, care must be taken to correlate all data to real part performance and service life.