New standard to monitor building sealing performance
By Peter Fabris, Contributing Editor
A new ASTM International standard is intended to help manufacturers and regulators better understand how building sealants change after they have been compressed or stretched.
The new standard (C1815) helps quantify the behavior of sealants as they are stressed and compressed over time. It will allow for predictive analysis of various sealant materials.
“Sealant will fail when the internal stress is greater than the tear strength,” says Christopher White, a research chemist at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. “This standard allows the community to start to understand and quantify the time-dependent response of the sealant.”
The new standard will be used by manufacturers to measure the residual stress in various sealant formulations. Regulators will use the standard to modify existing sealant standards to more realistically incorporate sealant compression behavior.