The Effect of the Use of Full Body Harnesses on Their Protective Properties
A full body harness is a component of personal systems protecting against falls from a height. To ensure users’ safety, the harness must retain its protective properties during its whole service period. All the elements of a harness (webbings, threads, metal buckles, etc.) are exposed to destructive factors. Harnesses stored and used for a few years were tested. The paper discusses the most frequent types of damage and their effect on the essential resistance parameters. The effect of atmospheric conditions, sunlight, mechanical damage and dust on the parameters of webbings was tested. Conclusions on the main causes of the loss of the protective properties of harnesses are drawn; periodic checks of the physical conditions and guidelines for estimating acceptable service time are recommended.
Comparison of the UV-degradation chemistry of polypropylene, polyethylene, polyamide 6 and polybutylene terephthalate
The photodegradation mechanism of polymers highly depends on the type and concentration of chromophores present. This influence is studied by making a comparison between the UV-degradation of PE, PP, PA6 and PBT and the thermooxidative degradation of PP at a comparable temperature. The degradation processess are followed by determining the oxygen uptake, CO, CO2 and peroxide formation. During UV-degradation of PP, PE, PA6 and PBT the oxygen uptake is linear in time without an induction period. The oxidation rate of PP is higher than that of PBT, which is slightly higher than the oxidation rate of PA6, while that of PE is the lowest. The determined amount of peroxides depends on the ageing time. For the UV-degradation this does not lead to the expected increase of the oxidation rate, as is the case with thermooxidation of PP. Only a limited proportion of the peroxides formed during the UV-degradation decomposes into radicals. The oxidation rate is mainly determined by other radical forming reactions. In the case of PE and PP this is probably initiation by polymer-oxygen Charge Transfer Complexes (CTCs) and for PA6 and PBT direct photolysis of the amide or the ester linkage, respectively. Thickness degradation profiles show that the UV-degradation processes of PP and PBT are heterogeneous. For PP this is due to oxygen diffusion limitation, while in the case of PBT it is the result of absorption of the UV-light.
Changes in Quartz During Heating and the Possible Effects on Si Production
In Si and FeSi production, the main Si source is SiO2, in the form of quartz. Reactions with SiO2 generate SiO gas that further reacts with SiC to Si. During heating, quartz will transform to other SiO2 modifications with cristobalite as the stable high-temperature phase. Transformation to cristobalite is a slow process. Its rate has been investigated for several industrial quartz sources and has been shown to vary considerably among the different quartz types. Other differences in behavior during heating between these quartz sources, such as softening temperature and volume expansion, have also been studied. The quartz-cristobalite ratio will affect the rate of reactions involving SiO2. The industrial consequences and other implications of the observed difference between quartz types are discussed. Initial studies of industrial quartz were published by Ringdalen et al. In the current work, a new experimental method has been developed, and an investigation of several new quartz sources has confirmed the earlier observed large variation between different sources. The repeatability of the data has been studied and the effect of gas atmosphere investigated. The results from the earlier work are included as a basis for the discussion.