Environmental and Micro-Environmental Influences Affecting the Performance of Polymer Stabilisers

Abstract

The accelerated testing of the efficiency and longevity of modern stabiliser packages is expected to provide data allowing us to reduce the development cycle in designing future polymer articles for outdoor application within a commercially acceptable time. Acceleration of photooxidation, heterogeneity in polymer degradation, formation of concentration gradients in stabiliser consumption, and the possibility of determining the spatial distribution of stabiliser transformation products or the negative influences accounting for atmospheric pollutants are analysed to minimize misleading data from accelerated tests, and to provide a base giving more information on the chemical and physical processes accompanying the testing of stabilised polymers.

Polymer ageing: physics, chemistry or engineering? Time to reflect

“…As with artificial weathering, correlation of the results of an extreme climate with behaviour under service conditions may not be straightforward. Caution is always advised in standards and in the most authoritative texts [64,96,97].…”