Weathering is a form of product testing that mimics the aging process to determine a product’s shelf life. Accelerated aging allows companies to test new products before release, and some products require weathering to generate expiration dates. The products are subjected to intense stress, and data on durability is recorded to extrapolate a potential shelf life. Companies may do their own testing or send products to third-party labs.
Weathering is a form of product testing in which a product is subjected to stress that is intended to mimic the aging process. While it is possible to evaluate products as they age naturally, accelerated aging allows people to roughly determine how long the product will survive in the real world without having to wait for the product to decompose naturally. This allows companies to test new products before they are released without having to wait weeks, months or years as they monitor natural aging to determine what the product’s shelf life might be.
For some types of products, accelerated aging tests are required in order to generate expiration dates. In these cases, you may need to submit your test results to regulatory agencies so they can be verified. In other cases, weathering is used to identify problems that should be fixed before a product is released. For example, if the packaging breaks down very quickly during weathering tests, a company might choose to change the packaging to avoid this problem.
In these tests, the products are subjected to very intense stress far beyond what they would encounter in the real world. This can include mechanical stress, such as with equipment that is used in a way that is difficult to see when it starts to fail, along with extreme temperatures, humidity changes, physical trauma, and so on. The idea is to simulate the aging process within a very short period of time; which the product may not be subjected to abuse in the real world such as during accelerated aging, the cumulative stress endured by the product during a normal life can be equivalent to that simulated in accelerated aging.
As the weathering progresses, data on the product’s durability is recorded. This is then used to extrapolate a potential shelf life. Some issues people think about when performing such tests include: how exposure to UV light might affect the product, exposure to corrosive materials, physical trauma during shipping, and dramatic changes in temperature, among many other things . If possible, these conditions are simulated to see what happens to the product.
Some companies do their own weathering tests in-house, using equipment they have in their lab. Others may send products for such testing to third-party labs that can conduct the testing. This may be done for greater reliability or because a company lacks facilities to do testing.
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