PV 3929 and PV 3930 tests now offered at Micom Laboratories
Micom Laboratories is proud to announce that it now offers PV 3929 and PV 3930 tests as part of its automobile testing and UV testing services. These standards, which are exclusive to Volkswagen, describe accelerated weathering methods that allow assessing the aging behavior of plastics, elastomers and folding top cloths through the use of UV exposure. Indeed, those methods rely on the use of Xenon arc light as an irradiation source and they are thus based on standard ASTM G155 . The difference between these methods is that PV 3929 simulates a dry and hot climate while PV 3930 replicate a moist and hot environment and the latter can also be used for paintwork and comparable coating.
PV 3929 and PV 3930 tests
The purpose of PV 3929 and PV 3930 is to characterize the aging behavior of plastics, elastomers and folding-top cloths through an accelerated weathering test which reproduces the main properties of peculiar climates. More particularly, PV 3929 simulate a dry and warm weather that is typical of Arizona and South Africa while PV 3930 imitate a humid and hot climate that is characteristic of Florida. Indeed, it is through the adjustment of the relative humidity, the temperature, the irradiance intensity, the filter and of the length of the test that it possible to reproduce the equivalent of one year’s worth of UV radiations that are comprised between 300 and 385 nm of the chosen environment. Furthermore, it is due to the good approximation of the full solar spectrum of the Xenon arc lamp that it is possible to faithfully represent a year’s worth of outdoor exposure in less than 2000 hours of test light exposure. Lastly, these tests mainly rely on the evaluation of the aesthetics properties of the materials in order to portray the aging behavior, however some mechanical properties have to be appraised as well. More precisely, the glossiness, the yellowing and the colorfastness are the main aesthetics properties that are quantified while the mechanical properties may be assessed through the use of tensile tests, hardness and impact resistance tests.
Micom offers polymer testing services for a wide selection of material and products. For more information about the PV 3929 and PV 3930, we invite you to contact our material testing laboratory today. It will be our pleasure to answer your questions about either of those tests.
Micom Laboratories is a third party industrial material testing laboratory accredited by A2LA, CGSB, ISTA and many other organizations.
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