Low-Temperature EMMA®/EMMAQUA®

The Low-Temperature EMMA/EMMAQUA - LT-EMMA/EMMAQUA is Atlas latest innovation that utilizes cool mirror technology in natural exposure testing.

This new outdoor testing device delivers more than five years of equivalent radiation exposure as would be received in a standard outdoor testing rack in South Florida in a single year, but with much cooler sample temperatures when compared to traditional EMMA/EMMAQUA testing.

In the 1960s Atlas DSET Laboratories pioneered accelerated outdoor weathering with its Fresnel-reflecting solar concentration devices - EMMA®: Equatorial Mount with Mirrors for Acceleration and EMMAQUA®: Equatorial Mount with Mirrors for Acceleration with Water.

In 2014, Atlas introduced its latest advancement in exposure testing, the Low-Temperature EMMA and Low-Temperature EMMAQUA: LT-EMMA/ EMMAQUA.

The device achieves cooler sample temperatures through a patented cool mirror technology that has very high reflectance in the UV and near visible wavelength ranges while attenuating reflectance in the longer wavelength visible and IR portions of the solar spectrum.

ASTM G90 devices can effectively cool many test materials.

However, there are several situations where this cooling methodology does not adequately maintain sample temperatures within acceptable limits.

Elevated temperatures can adversely affect samples and potentially compromise test results by causing unnatural weathering degradation.

Oftentimes, even moderate temperature increases in accelerated testing may cause significant adverse appearance effects on test materials.

The result may cause these materials to become darkened or charred.

Frequently, high exposure temperatures can cause even greater damage to mechanical properties on temperature-sensitive materials and may cause them to warp and develop other structural damage.

The Low-Temperature EMMA®/EMMAQUA® device provides a solution to long-standing concerns over outdoor accelerated weathering of temperature-sensitive materials.

Analyzing black standard temperature - BST and black panel temperature - BPT measurements on the Atlas LT-EMMA/EMMAQUA device has shown that temperatures remain significantly lower than that of standard ASTM G90 devices while successfully achieving high irradiance levels.