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Researchers
at the Commerce Department's National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their
industry and government partners today cut the ribbon on a
revolutionary device to determine quickly and accurately the
damage to polymer coatings, materials and structures exposed
to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays, temperature and humidity.
The new facility in NIST's Building and Fire Research Laboratory
will help speed the introduction of new products into the
market and reduce building repair costs.
To measure
weathering, manufacturers currently either set their product
in the sun and watch what happens or use an indoor weathering
chamber. The outdoor method often requires multiyear iterations
before a marketable product is developed. While laboratory
testing is quicker, no one has been able to link field and
laboratory exposure results, and neither approach is very
repeatable or reproducible.
The NIST
SPHERE, which can accommodate more than 500 samples, distributes
UV radiation uniformly into as many as 32 specimen chambers
with independently and precisely controlled temperature and
humidity ensuring repeatability and reproducibility of test
results. The device accelerates weathering by generating controlled
temperature, humidity and UV exposure environments up to 50
times faster than outdoor weathering. Materials exposed to
the SPHERE's UV light for one day receive the equivalent of
50 days of sunlight. The SPHERE is designed to allow rapid
testing of the same material under a wide variety of weathering
environments at the same time. For example, this device can
generate exposures similar to a Texas summer dawn, a North
Dakota winter night, a mid-summer Florida afternoon and a
California sunset, plus up to 28 other environments all at
the same time.
The National
Association of Home Builders estimates that Americans spend
between $65 billion and $75 billion annually on maintenance,
repair and replacement, often due to the premature failure
of a material exposed to outdoor weathering. The NIST SPHERE
will make it possible for manufacturers to rapidly develop
innovative products tailored for specific environments and
will enable consumers to choose a product based not only on
cost but also on its performance life.
Among
NIST's partners with Cooperative Research and Development
Agreements in this project: Atlas Electric Devices, ATOFINA,
DAP Products Inc., Degussa Construction Systems-Americas,
Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Sika Corporation, Solvay and Wacker.
NIST's partners directly supporting this work include: Department
of Housing and Urban Development/ Partnership for Advancing
Technology in Housing; U.S. Department of Agriculture/Forest
Products Laboratory (Madison); Air Force Research Laboratory;
Federal Highway Administration; and the Smithsonian Environmental
Research Center.
The NIST
SPHERE is the centerpiece of NIST's Service Life Prediction
program to develop repeatable and reproducible methods for
predicting the performance of construction materials. For
further information, see http://slp.nist.gov/coatings/cslpmain.html.
As a non-regulatory
agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology Administration,
NIST develops and promotes measurements, standards and technology
to enhance productivity, facilitate trade and improve the
quality of life.
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