Survey of potential outdoor accelerated ageing systems for the characterization of CSP components' durability

Given the long lifespan of Concentrated Solar Power Plants (CSP), it is essential that we accurately predict the endurance of the plant materials. Accelerated aging is a practical tool for both scientific research and innovative materials testing because of the fast and reliable results it can provide. It is used to test the endurance of the materials, to define their weaknesses, to visualize the degradation, to follow the loss of performance and the most important to estimate the service life. There are two methods for accelerated aging: Indoor accelerated aging, performed in a laboratory using climate chambers that simulate external climatic conditions, and outdoor accelerated aging which, as the name implies, is exercised outdoors with tools designated for targeted practices. Unlike Indoor accelerated aging, which requires climatic chambers for its experiments, outdoor accelerated aging is considered as a system consisting of several complementary parts that combine to achieve highly reliable and representative results: collection of weather data, stress factors measuring system and outdoor accelerated aging tools. Outdoor accelerated aging tools are the most important part of outdoor accelerated aging tests, and given that no standards exist to set the norm, a scientific and independent survey of the existing systems is needed as summarized in this paper.