Service Life Prediction: Why Is This so Hard?

Service life prediction, in general, and weathering lifetime, in particular, have been persistent problems despite nearly a century of work. Part of the problem has been a gap between the work of scientists studying material degradation and the practices, needs, and desires of engineers who make the specifications and standards that drive most testing. In this chapter, we describe why this gap exists and propose a way to close it using the methodology of service life prediction to develop predictive test conditions for specific classes of materials.