What is the Environmental Test?

What is the Environmental Test?

Environmental test is an activity designed to ensure the functional reliability of products in all environments during the specified life period, such as transportation and storage and so on. It is to expose the product to natural or artificial environmental conditions to undergo its role in order to evaluate the performance of the product in the actual environmental conditions, and to analyze and study the impact of environmental factors and their mechanism of functions. Therefore, with the intention of having a more profound understanding of the environmental test, some specific knowledge will be given in the following.

l  Introduction of the Environmental Test

Environmental testing equipment is a method for enterprises or institutions to verify the quality of raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products by simulating all kinds of environmental climates, transportation and vibration and so on. The purpose is to verify whether the materials and products meet the expected quality goals in R&D, design and manufacture by using various environmental testing equipment. And the environmental test is widely used in aviation, aerospace, military, shipbuilding, health care and other fields.

Environmental testing equipment can also be used according to IEC, MIL, ISO, GB, GJB and other standards or user’s requirements for high temperature, low temperature, impregnation, temperature cycle, low pressure, constant humidity and heat and so on.

l  Classification of the Environmental Test

1.    Natural Environmental Test

Natural environmental test is to expose products, especially materials and components, directly to a natural environment for a long time in order to determine the impact of the natural environment on it. And this test is usually used in various types of natural exposure fields.

2.    Using Environmental Test

Using environmental test is to install the product on the platform and directly withstand the natural or induced effects of the platform environment encountered in the use of the product, in order to determine its adaptability to the platform environment. And this test is usually on site.

3.    Laboratory Environmental Test

Laboratory environmental test is to place products in artificially generated climatic, mechanical or electromagnetic environments to determine the impact of these environments on it. And this test usually happens in the environmental chamber, which is built by the environmental chamber manufacturers or the test chamber manufacturers.

l  Domestic Development of the Environmental Test

From the beginning of this century, people have noticed that environmental conditions have a great impact on the performance of products. As products become more and more complex and the using environment becomes more and more harsh, people start to attach importance to the environmental test.

In China, the environmental test began in the 1950s. Natural exposure test stations were first established in Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places to explore the impacts of climate conditions on products in tropical, subtropical and coastal areas. China's environmental test has made great progress in the past decades, from learning foreign standards to gradually establishing its own environmental testing system. At present, the domestic environmental testing work is being carried out on a large scale. Each province and city has established an electronic product inspection station. Major companies and factories also have their own reliable environmental chambers. With the rapid development of the aerospace industry, industrial departments of the national defense have begun to attach great importance to reliability and environmental tests, and invested enormous manpower, material and financial resources, which plays an important role in improving the quality of military products.