1 Scope

This document specifies laboratory test methods to assess the durability of silvered-glass reflectors with high technical performance to be used in concentrating solar technologies. The reflectors within the scope of this document are composed of a float-glass substrate and a reflecting silver layer on its back-side, which is protected by a thin copper layer and an anticorrosive paint system composed of a primer and a top coating, and an optional intermediate coating.

This document defines multiple accelerated aging tests on reflector samples of size of 10 cm × 10 cm or larger. It defines the measurement methods to determine the degradation parameters used for assessment and the acceptance criteria of the accelerated aging tests.

Annex A of this document outlines the procedure to apply this document to reflector types of different composition than that of the silvered float-glass reflectors described above.

Annex B provides information on how to approximately correlate the measured degradation of selected accelerated aging tests with outdoor exposure in different environments. These correlations are limited to silvered float-glass reflector types with the abovementioned layer stack, since differing coating types are likely to introduce unforeseen degradation modes, which possibly will not be triggered under the proposed testing conditions.