INDUSTRIAL STANDARDIZATION OF THERMAL-ANALYSIS IN JAPAN

To satisfy the needs for industrial standards for thermal analysis in the Japanese polymer industry, round-robin tests of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetry (TG), thermomechanical analysis (TMA) and thermodilatometry (TD) have been carried out recently. The results are discussed in this short review. The DSC applications tested were not only for determination of transition temperature but also for measurements of the transition heat and heat capacity. The TG task group did not aim at long-term thermal endurance studies, but relative thermal stability in molding and estimation of filler content, residual solvent content, etc. TMA was found to be a useful tool for measuring softening temperature and heat distortion temperature, especially for high-temperature engineering plastics, instead of the Vicat test which has temperature limitations. For temperature calibration of DSC and TG, ICTA-NIST certified reference materials were used together with other potential temperature standards; some inorganic substances and alloys were not found to be preferable to pure metals. For TMA and TD metal plates were found to be very useful for temperature calibration. Analysis of the round-robin test results also clarified present status of practical applications of thermal analysis, such as reproducibility and causes of errors.