Why Test?
Many adhesives and sealants are subject to the damaging forces of nature, including sunlight, heat, and moisture. Customers expect excellent long-term durability against the elements.
Will your adhesives and sealants last outdoors? For how long? Do your new environmentally friendly products meet your customers' performance expectations? Has something changed in your process that might affect your product's long term durability? Don't guess when you can test.
Q-Lab testers are used to evaluate weathering and light stability of a variety of adhesives and sealants, including:
- Construction adhesives
- Automotive adhesives
- Hot melt adhesives
- Building sealants and caulks
- Pressure-sensitive adhesives
- Structural adhesives
Q-Lab serves thousands of customers and dozens of industries involved with these adhesives and sealants. The QUV accelerated weathering tester is the weathering device relied on most by the sealants and adhesives industry because of its realistic simulation of the critical short-wave UV portion of sunlight and realistic, aggressive moisture functions. For some applications for adhesives and sealants, simulating the full sunlight spectrum is important, making the Q-SUN xenon test chamber another popular choice because of its accurate solar simulation. Studies have indicated that weathering laboratory exposures may correlate well to outdoor exposures for some sealant materials.
Our Exposure Testing Services for Adhesives and Sealants
Florida & Arizona Natural Outdoor
While accelerated weathering chambers are a key weapon in the fight against the forces of sunlight, heat, and moisture, nothing beats the real thing: outdoor testing in one of Q-Lab's benchmark outdoor weathering facilities. Q-Lab's South Florida and Arizona Desert sites provide the ultimate test of your adhesives and sealants' outdoor durability using natural conditions.
Accelerated Laboratory Weathering
Accelerated laboratory weathering testing is an efficient and effective way to evaluate the durability of adhesives and sealants, designed to accelerate your weathering testing process to provide you with accurate and reliable answers.
Q-Lab's accelerated weathering testers simulate the primary weathering conditions that degrade adhesives and sealants outdoors, allowing user to reproduce::
- Cracking
- Color change and fading
- Loss of adhesion
- Blistering
- Chalking
- Yellowing
- Shrinkage
A variety of international test standards are used to evaluate weathering resistance and light stability. Visit Q-Lab’s Standards Search page to browse standards and find the right test for your product.
Additional Testing for Adhesives and Sealants
Corrosion Testing
Weathering isn't the only concern for adhesives and sealants. Corrosion is responsible for billions of dollars of damage to materials and infrastructure each year. For testing against the forces of corrosion, the Q-FOG cyclic corrosion chamber is the perfect tool for recreating realistic industrial or marine corrosion in the laboratory. When you alternate Q-FOG and QUV tester exposures, you obtain the most reliable and realistic weathering and corrosion results available today.
Q-TRAC Solar Concentrator Testing
The Q‑TRAC natural sunlight concentrator combines the benefits of outdoor and accelerated testing, delivering five times the annual solar energy of an exposure in South Florida.