18 March 1987A series of radiation tests have been carried out on halogen-free cable-insulating and cable-sheathing materials comprising commercial LDPE, EPR, EV A, and SIR compounds. Samples were irradiated at five different radiation sources, e.g. a nuclear reactor, fuel elements, a 60 Co source, and in the stray radiation field of high-energy proton and electron accelerators at CERN and DESY. The integrated doses were within 50 to 5000 kGy and the dose rates within 10 mGy/s to 70 Gy/s. Tensile tests and gel-fraction measurements were carried out. The results confirm that LDPEs are very sensitive to long-term ageing effects, and that important errors exceeding an order of magnitude can be made when assessing radiation damage by accelerated tests. On the other hand, well-stabilized LDPEs and the cross-linked rubber compounds do not show large dose-rate effects for the values given above. Furthermore, the interpretation of the elongation-at-break data and their relation to gel-fraction measurements show that radiation damage is related to the total absorbed dose irrespective of the different radiation types used in this experiment.
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