As electric vehicle (EV) adoption increases, requirements for the long-term ageing resistance of plastics exposed to automotive chemicals are rising significantly.
In particular, frequent battery charging events and continuous thermal management place sustained thermal and chemical loads on under-hood plastic components.
As a result, required service life at operating temperature for these components is increasing to approximately 45,000–55,000 hours, compared with roughly 5,000 hours for conventional internal combustion engine applications. Plastics in these environments are commonly used in components such as pumps and valves.
Historically, material durability was primarily evaluated using air-heat ageing tests.
To better reflect real operating conditions in electric vehicles, BASF has adapted established testing methods to hydrolysis ageing, using water-glycol mixtures representative of automotive cooling systems.
Service life prediction is based on the Arrhenius relationship, which links reaction rate to temperature and enables extrapolation of long-term material behavior under normal operating conditions.
As part of a long-term test program initiated in 2020, an advanced polyamide material was evaluated for hydrolysis resistance and thermal stability. The material was tested under controlled hydrolysis conditions over a multi-year period to assess retention of mechanical and functional properties relevant to under-hood EV applications.
Test results indicate that the material’s performance can be extrapolated to service lives exceeding 100,000 hours based on five years of ageing data. These findings provide additional validation for the use of advanced polyamide materials in electric passenger and commercial vehicles, where extended durability under combined thermal and chemical exposure is increasingly critical.
Filed Under: Technology News, Thermal Management