PREDICTION OF LONG-TERM AGING OF CELLULAR PLASTICS

Chlorofluorocarbon(CFC)-based cellular plastics are facing the challenge of environmental protection. The cellular plastic industry has been looking for new blowing agents as alternatives for CFCs since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987. The prediction of long-term thermal performance of newly developed cellular plastics thus becomes apparent. In this paper, the model ACP (aging of cellular plastic) is introduced. This model was originally developed for evaluating the thermal performance of CFC-based cellular plastics. By updating, it can handle the heat and mass transfer of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-22, n-Pentane, iso-Pentane, neo-Pentane and cyclo-Pentane. In comparison with short-term measurements, the ACP program now is able to predict the aging performance of pentane-based cellular plastics. The effective strategy for evaluating the long-term thermal performance of cellular plastics is to combine the short-term measurements and model simulation.