ISO 22088-6 Plastics - Determination of Resistance to Environmental Stress Cracking (ESC) - Part 6: Slow Strain Rate Method

Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), this part of the ISO 22088 standard describes a procedure for assessing the susceptibility of polymeric materials to environmental stress cracking (ESC) in chemical environments by slowly increasing the stress applied to a tensile specimen at a constant rate.

It can be applied to test specimens prepared by molding or machining and can be used to evaluate the relative ESC sensitivity of a material exposed to different environments or the relative ESC sensitivity of different plastics exposed to a specific environment.

This is primarily a sequencing test and is not intended to provide design data.

The main advantage of the test compared to the test methods described in ISO 22088 Chapters 2 to 5 is the speed at which the ESC sensitivity of a given polymer/media combination can be evaluated.

When a plastic material is stretched or stretched in air below its yield point, stress cracking can occur after a time that can be too long. These voltages can be internal or external, or a combination of both. Simultaneous exposure to a chemical environment and stress or strain can result in significantly shorter downtime compared to an inert environment.

This phenomenon is called environmental stress cracking (ESC) and is exhibited by many materials, including plastics. Allowable long-term stress or strain can be significantly reduced by this phenomenon.

Measurements can also be used to evaluate the effect of molding conditions on the quality of an article when the failure mode corresponds to that achieved in actual service.

However, it is almost impossible to establish any direct relationship between the results of short-term ESC measurements on test samples and the actual service behavior of the articles, since the behavior of the latter will be more complex than that of the test samples.

Among the services provided by our organization within the framework of material testing services, there are also ISO 22088-6 standard tests. Do not hesitate to contact our laboratory EUROLAB for your testing and certification requests.