ASTM E171-11 Standard Practice for Conditioning and Testing Flexible Barrier Packaging

Published by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the ASTM E171-11 standard provides the standard temperature and humidity characteristics and test method for conditioning and testing flexible barrier packaging materials under nominal ambient conditions. The full name of this standard is as follows: ASTM E171-11 Standard practice for conditioning and testing flexible barrier packaging.

Conditioning and testing materials in this standard include paper and plastic-containing materials. Instruments and methods used to measure temperature and humidity conditions should be validated.

According to the test method described in the ASTM E171-11 standard, conditioning should be used to minimize differences in test results caused by fluctuations in temperature and humidity, or both. Most flexible packaging materials and components, especially hygroscopic materials, change their physical properties as the temperature and relative humidity to which they are exposed change.

Many packaging materials do not show a significant change in physical properties across the temperature and humidity range typically found in office and laboratory environments. Conditioning samples to obtain useful test results is generally not difficult and is overlooked during routine testing.

Conditioning should be considered when:

• When comparing laboratory results (supplier and customer)
• Where temperature or humidity is expected to have an effect on test results
• When potential sources of variation need to be minimized

Temperature and humidity values ​​alone are not sufficient to fully define a storage condition. Many other factors not defined in this specification may be relevant, such as time, light, and atmospheric pressure.

There are many other temperature and humidity conditions that can be properly addressed to test end use conditions. For example, freezing, refrigerated or malicious storage. These must be determined individually and are not covered by this standard.

This application only covers materials that fall within the field of general flexible barrier packaging materials.

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