Wednesday 29 June 2022

Summary of Testing Standards for Polymer Material Selection

Hello and welcome to a new post.  Looking at a technical data sheet of an engineering polymer, we can find the values and also the standard how this value was estimated. 

It is helpful in the material screening phase during polymer selection for your application to have a feeling which tests can be done and what standards are linked to them. 

In general there are two standardization companies: the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and  the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Both are well known organizations in the plastics industry. 

Apart from plastic tests, they also develop all kinds of standards for different industries.

ASTM vs ISO - Are they the same? 

Results of ASTM and ISO are similar and there are one-to-one correlations of some ASTM and ISO standards. 

ASTM and ISO differ in measurement procedures and conditions leading to slightly different results.

Example tensile modulus

The plastic's tensile modulus can be measured according to ASTM D638 or ISO 527-1. Looking at the results, they are similar however not the same. 

There are cases where they are the same, however they are rare cases.

Overview of plastics testing standards: mechanical, thermal, and electrical. 

Figure 1 shows the summary of the mechanical standards, Figure 2 of the thermal standards, and Figure 2 of the electrical standards. 

Figure 1: Overview Standards for Mechanical Tests

Figure 2: Overview Standards for Thermal Tests

Figure 3: Overview Standards for Electrical Tests

There are more standards which can be accessed over the ASTM and ISO homepages. 

Also I made a video where I compare the ASTM/ISO data with real world application requieremnts: 


Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

Greetings

Herwig 

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