UV Light Accelerated Weathering Tester

Caltech India offers UV Light Accelerated Weathering Tester. Many polymer materials are often be damage by natural environmental factors which from Earths surface and atmosphere when used outdoor. This affects their useful life. In order to properly assess their useful life in the out doors, using the environmental testing equipment to simulation of each kinds of natural climatic conditions , study weather resistance of each kinds of products in the laboratory has become a widely and effective method.

BGD 855 & BGD 856 UV Light Accelerated Weathering Tester（hereinafter referred as BUV） adopts fluorescent UV lamp as the light source. Its inner temperature and humidity can be properly controlled to obtain the periodic condensation on the sample for fully evaluating the damaged factor caused by sunlight, moisture and temperature (materials aging phenomenon includes fading, disluster, intensity reduction, cracking, flaking, chalking, and oxidation).

Fluorescent UV light can emulate the effect of sunshine, while condensation and water spray system can emulate the effects of rain and dew. During the test, radiation energy and temperature are controllable. A typical test cycle generally carries out under strong irradiation of UV light or in the dark and wet condensation period with 100% relative humidity. These tests generally applied in the fields of paint and coatings, automotive industry, plastic, wood, glue, etc…

Standards:

• ISO 11507《Paints and varnished-Exposure of coatings to artificial weathering- Exposure to fluorescent UV lamps and water》
• ISO 4892-1《 Plastics-Methods of exposure to laboratory light sources-Part 1: General Guidance》
• ISO 4892-3《 Methods of exposure to laboratory light sources-Part 3: Fluorescent UV lamps》
• ASTM D4587《Standard Practice for Fluorescent UV-Condensation Exposures of Paint and Related Coatings》
• ASTM D4329《Standard Practice S for Fluorescent UV Exposure of Plastic》
• ASTM G-151《Standard Practice for Exposing Nonmetallic Materials in Accelerated Test Devices that use laboratory light sources》
• ASTM G-154《Standard Practice for Operating Fluorescent Light Apparatus for UV Exposure of Non-Metallic Materials》
• BS 2782:Part5, 《Method 540B (Methods of Exposure to Lab Light Sources)》
• SAE J2020《Accelerated Exposure of Automotive Exterior Malts Using a Fluorescent UV/Condensation Apparatus》
• JIS D 0205《Test Method of Weather-ability for Automotive Parts》
• Original UVA or UVB lamps from Q-Lab, ensure the comparability of testing results.

Features:

• Original UVA or UVB lamps from Q-Lab, ensure the comparability of testing results.
  All BUV machines use fluorescent UV lamps produced by Q-LAB as testing light source, comparing with other type lamps （including Xenon Lamps）, UV lamps are more stable. Its spectrum power distribution won’t change as the lamps weathering, even to 5,000 hours. Thus more repeatable testing results can be achieved easily, and decrease changing lamps times and reduce the running cost..
  Furthermore, these lamps from Q-Lab are produced on the base of more than 40 years’ experience and fluorescent technology. It is designed specially and tested with most serious quality control.
  Different types fluorescent UV lamps are used in different fields, for example:
  ① UVA-340 Lamp: UVA-340 Lamp can highly simulate short-wave ultraviolet light of sunlight, the wavelength range is from 365 nm to 295 nm.
  ② UVA 351 Lamp: Simulates UV sunlight which has passed through the windows. It is excellent for testing materials aging process indoor.
  ③ UVB 313 Lamp: UVB-313lampemits strongershortwaveultravioletlight compared with the ultraviolet rays on Earth, thus can accelerate material aging process.
  However, this lampmay causesome unrealistic materialdamage. Itis mainly used inquality control,research and development,and the test of the materials with strong weather resistance.
  ④ QFS-40 Lamp：Also be called FS-40 or F40UVB，it’s the original QUV lamps. Now, FS-40 lamps are stilled used for some traditional car testing.
• Irradiance can be controlled automatically (with the closed-loop system, the value of irradiance is more precise and steady.Only for BGD 856)
  The superiority of BGD 856 UV Light Accelerated Weathering Tester is that it can be controlled and adjusted automatically during testing process. As it is well known, the energy in testing process is the main factor in polymer materials aging. In order to ensure reproducibility and comparability of testing results, the UV energy is a very important technical indicator. We adopt the principles which similar with Sun- eye automatically monitor the testing process throughout the energy value, when the lamp energy is less than the expected value, the system can automatically monitor the difference and automatically replenish energy immediately.
• Irradiance can be calibrated automatically; With spray and condensation function. (Only for BGD 856)
  As any other lamps, UV lamps energy of BUV also decreases as time increase. The control system would compensate it automatically through strengthening the voltage of lamps. But as the using time become longer and longer, the energy of lamps decrease continuously. For some high set point of irradiance, BUV couldn’t keep this irradiance any longer, and now the system of BUV would reminder failure “the error of irradiance is too large” and shut off the machine. Now, the operator should calibrate the BUV by standard calibration radiometer. If machine still can’t get the set point after calibrating, the user should replace the two pcs lamps corresponding to the relative sensor and calibrate again.
  BUV is calibrated by BGD Calibration Radiometer which is produced by our company. User can use one radiometer to calibrate some BUV, radiometer can test fluorescent UV lamps. It is not only used to calibrate the UVA lamps , but also to do UVB lamps. For UVB lamps, it has been calibrated well under the wave length 313 nm with W/m2/nm unit before delivery. For UVA lamps, it has been calibrated well under the wave length 340 nm with W/m2/nm unit.
  Calibration Radiometer is made up of radiometer and sensor（see picture as below）：
  The sensor of BGD 8118 calibration radiometer is very sensitive to ultraviolet rays, but don’t have any action to visible light, and just have a little response for infrared light even can be ignored. So other rays can’t bring any influence for this radiometer.
• Water Spray and Condensation function
  Water spray
  For some applications, the water spray can simulate end-use environmental conditions better. Water-spray can effectively simulate heat shock or mechanical erosion caused by dramatic temperature changes or rain. In some practical application conditions, such asa sudden brash in a sunshine day, can bring heat shock because the temperature of the material changes drastically. This heatshock severely tests the properties of many materials.BUV water spray can simulate this heat shock and /or stress corrosion. BUV spray system design with 12nozzles, each side has 6 pieces in the test chamber. Spray system can run a few minute sand then shut down.This transitory water spray can cool the samples quickly, creating heat shock conditions.
  Condensation
  In many outdoor environments, materials are placed in wet condition for over 12 hours each day. Studies have shown that the main factor of this wet condition outdoor is caused by dew, not rain. BUV simulates the outdoor moisture erosion through the unique condensation capabilities. In the condensation cycle during the test, water on the bottom of the chamber is heated to obtain super heated steam filling the test chamber. Hot steam makes the chamber maintain 100% relative humidity, and maintain a relatively high temperature. Sample was fixed on the wall of test chamber. Thus the sample surface is exposed to the ambient air of test chamber. The other side of the sample is exposed to the natural environment which has a cooling effect, bringing internal and external surfaces of the sample with temperature difference, and the temperature difference leads to the test surfaces always have drips caused by condensation process.
• Alarm and protection: Creep-age protection，water-breaking protection，overloading protection，security door protection，over-temperature protection switch.
• According with many testing standards. The operator set any testing program
• Controlled by touch screen with friendly windows, user can check any parameter during test
• Real-time collect and store data, and testing data can be converted EXCEL format automatically and be saved. And all these data can educed by U disk. Achieve the real unattended running
• Can select TCP/IP Ethernet interface, the user can tele-control the machine through TCP/IP internet.
• Control the temperature automatically with the high precise Pt 100 temperature sensor of black board.

Main Technical Parameters:

• Light Source: UV-A (wave length 340 nm) or UV-B (wave length 313 nm) ; 40W×8 pcs (The normal use-life is 2,000 hours)
• The range of Irradiance: 0.1 W/m2 ～1.0 W/m2
• Temperature Range: Black Panel temperature（BPT）：RT+10℃-100℃
• Temperature Stability: ±2℃
• Interior of cabinet: Stainless steel -SUS 304 material
• Exterior of cabinet: Powder coating on SUS 304
• Insolating Area: 5175cm2/828in2
• Sample Capacity: 24 pieces of standard specimen（75×150mm standard samples） or 15 pieces of 100×300mm
• Size: 1400×500×1200mm（L×W×H）
• Weight: 125 kg
• Total Max. Power: 3KW
• Power: 220VAC±10% 50/60Hz；15A ( Max Electric Current )
• Adjustable range for water supply: 0-4LPM

Ordering Information:

BGD 855	Basic BUV—Basic Ultraviolet Light Accelerated Weathering Cabinet.（No irradicance control）
BGD 856	BUV—Ultraviolet Light Accelerated Weathering Cabinet
BGD 8110	UVB lamps (40w/313nm)
BGD 8111	UVA lamps (40W/340nm)
BGD 8118	Calibration Radiometer (310nm&340nm)
BGD 8120	0 ℃ Standard Resistor
BGD 8121	100 ℃ Standard Resistor
BGD 8130	Sample Shelf

In India, we have various customers from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Surat, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Indore, Bhopal, Patna, Vadodara, Ghaziabad, Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Madurai, Nashik, Srinagar, Aurangabad, Dhanbad, Allahabad and Ranchi in India.