COMPARISON OF 2 INSTRUMENTS FOR ACCELERATED WEATHERING TESTS ON PLASTICIZED PVC

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 o f the IR optical density at 1780 cm(-1). For all samples the WOM weath ering is representative of the different forms of outdoor weathering d egradation with an acceleration factor of some units. The QUV weatheri ng is often representative of outdoor weathering with a greater than t en acceleration factor but for a sample which is rapidly outdoor degra ded, 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 fr equency of the QUV lamps. A similar comparative aging study of differe ntly stabilized and plasticized PVC laboratory films displays another case of non representativeness of the QUV weathering chamber.