Durabilidad y ensayos de envejecimiento acelerado en productos de construcción

Abstract

This paper deals with the topic of durability of

construction products, related with the Spanish

legal provision Real Decreto-Ley 8/2011, which

includes the obligation to carry out a technical

inspection on residential buildings with more

than 50 years.

The corresponding European technical entities

recommend that a construction product should

last for a period of 25 to 100 years, during which

it has to satisfy the Essential Requirements of

Directive 89/106/EEC.

Given this, it raises the question that the

manufacturer needs to have a reliable and quick

method that allows him to check whether a new

product, that wants to manufacture, will show

the desired duration. Nowadays, to solve this,

there is only one method: to carry out one or

several accelerated aging test procedures.

In an intuitive approach, an accelerated aging

test would be an intensive exposure to the

same degrading agents that the product will be

exposed in service. Intensive exposure means a

dose of degrading agent higher than the product

could receive naturally, so that within a short

period of few weeks it would be obtained, over

the product, the same effect that would suffer on

actual years of natural exposure in service.

This article displays several reflections about the

troubles to find an accelerated aging test that

corresponds to the natural aging. These thoughts

have been collected from various researchers

and authors. As an example of a construction

product, we had in mind the sandwich panel, but

the ideas expressed here are applicable to a wide

range of construction products.