Artificial aging

Description

A procedure that exposes a material to short periods of severe, but controlled, environments to induce accelerated deterioration. The experimental conditions may include intense light, high heat, wet-dry cycles, freeze-thaw cycles, pollutant exposure or combinations thereof and are usually done in a specially designed chamber such as a Weather-Ometer®. Selected parameters (Fading, loss of Adhesion, Corrosion, chemical composition, etc.) are periodically monitored as the experiment progresses. Once deterioration is induced and measured, it can be correlated to the deleterious conditions and plotted as a function of the exposure time. Ideally, these kinetic profiles could be used to predict service life of a material, however, since many factors can affect the natural aging process, this may not always be accurate. Artificial aging can be used to compare the relative deterioration character of several materials. Because the kinetics of the intense cycling may differ from natural aging kinetics, the term artificial aging is preferred over the term accelerated aging.

Synonyms and Related Terms

accelerated aging; artificial weathering; artificial ageing (Br.); künstliche Alterung (Deut.); viellissement artificiel (Fr.); envelhecimento artificial (Port.)

Resources and Citations

• Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)

• Theodore J. Reinhart, 'Glossary of Terms', Engineered Plastics, ASM International, 1988

• Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982

• A Glossary of Paper Conservation Terms, Margaret Ellis (ed.), Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York City, 1998

• Matte Paint: Its history and technology, analysis, properties and conservation treatment, Eric Hansen, Sue Walston, Mitchell Bishop (ed.), J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, Vol. 30 of AATA, 1993