Testing
We select and conduct tests that best suit your needs and those of your product, utilizing our wide range of equipment to ensure its quality and safety.
Objective. To know how your material will behave over time.
Our customer has developed 3 self-cleaning coatings for photovoltaic panels. These coatings will be exposed outdoors during their useful life. The performance of the photovoltaic panels and therefore their electricity production will depend on their good performance over time. They ask us to know how these coatings will behave in a real environment over the years, but in an accelerated way in order to bring their products to market as soon as possible.
Solution. Tests in climatic chamber and xenon chamber.
In this project, the solution proposed was to carry out accelerated aging tests. First of all, we carried out a review of the most important international standards, as well as the working conditions according to the climate of the area where the photovoltaic panels will be installed in the future.
The accelerated aging tests selected were the climatic chamber test, to check the stability of the coating against temperature differences between day and night; and the xenon chamber test, to check whether solar radiation can reduce the properties of the coating over time.
Once we selected the tests to be performed and agreed with the client, we defined the methods for evaluating the coating properties. We chose as main properties the transparency and color of the coating and its wettability properties (contact angle). To test these properties, we use a spectrophotometer or colorimeter to measure its color and a goniometer or contact angle to measure its wettability.
ATRIA presented the results, as well as the analysis and interpretation of all the data. With this information, our client was able to reformulate its coatings to achieve a longer useful life of these coatings.
