Comparison of two instruments for accelerated weathering tests on plasticized PVC

Abstract

Various PVC textile coatings have been comparatively tested in QUV and Weather-O-Meter (WOM) accelerated weathering chambers and in Florida tropical climate. The degradation has been measured by the variation of the IR optical density at 1780 cm −1. For all samples the WOM weathering is representative of the different forms of outdoor weathering degradation with an acceleration factor of some units. The QUV weathering is often representative of outdoor weathering with a greater than ten acceleration factor but for a sample which is rapidly outdoor degraded, the QUV chamber results showed that the sample is very resistant to degradation. This contradiction can be explained by the absorption frequency of the single UV stabilizer corresponding to the emission frequency of the QUV lamps. A similar comparative aging study of differently stabilized and plasticized PVC laboratory films displays another case of non representativeness of the QUV weathering chamber.