Development of Environmental Test

Development of Environmental Test

At the beginning, we need to know what environmental test is. The environmental test is to expose the product to certain environmental conditions, and evaluate the function of the components, equipment, and system in actual transportation, storage, and application environment conditions according to the test results. Environmental test can provide important information on product quality methods and it is an important way of quality assurance. In this passage, we will briefly introduce about the development of environmental test.

From the beginning of this century, people noticed that environmental conditions have a great impact on the performance of products. As products become more complex and the environment is more and more harsh, environmental testing has received much attention.

Foreign Situation

Environmental test has the history of more than 80 years internationally. In 1919, the United States began to conduct artificial simulated environmental tests. In 1943, the US Army, Navy, and Air Force developed environmental testing methods. The test projects at that time were mainly high temperature, damp heat, low air pressure, sand dust, salt spray, and solar radiation. The main purpose was to solve the quality problems of fighters and armored vehicles in combat in tropical desert areas. 

In 1955, the United States established the Environmental Engineering Society. The United Kingdom also established the Environmental Engineering Society in 1949. In the 1950s, the former Soviet Union established environmental test stations throughout the country and conducted extensive exposure tests in China. East Germany established the Environmental testing Committee in 1962, which is responsible for environmental test of telecommunications equipment and components. The IEC began to study environmental test problems in the 1940s. With the increasingly prominent environmental test problems of electronic and electrical products, the Tc50 "Environmental testing Technical Committee" was established in 1961, specializing in the classification and classification of environmental conditions.

Domestic Situation

China's environmental test began in the 1950s. It first established natural exposure test stations in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hainan Island, etc. And the environmental test explored the impact of climatic conditions on tropical, subtropical and coastal areas on products in Eastern Europe. China's environmental test has developed greatly over the past decades, from studying foreign standards to gradually establishing our own environmental test system. At present, the domestic environmental chamber working principle is being carried out on a large scale. All provinces and cities have established electronic product inspection institutes. 

The major factories and institutes of each major company also have their own reliability environmental laboratory, and have successively eliminated old equipment. With the introduction and acquisition of some new equipment, with the rapid development of the aerospace industry, the defense industry sector has begun to attach great importance to reliability and environmental test, and has invested huge manpower, material resources and financial resources to improve the quality of military products, which plays an important role in the process of optimizing military products.

The domestic research and production of environmental testing equipment has a history of more than 40 years, and has experienced three stages from imitation, self-design and update design. For more than 40 years, the number of factories engaged in the research and production of environmental test equipment in China has grown to more than 200, and they produced more than 200 kinds of benchtop environmental chamber. At present, many environmental chamber manufacturers introduce advanced technology, constantly update the design according to international and national standards, and develop towards multi-functional comprehensive parameters and computer control.