IEC 60216-1:2025 specifies the general ageing conditions and procedures to be used for deriving thermal endurance characteristics and gives guidance in using the detailed instructions and guidelines in the other parts of IEC 60216. Although originally developed for use with electrical insulating materials and simple combinations of such materials, the procedures are considered to be of more general applicability and are widely used in the assessment of materials not intended for use as electrical insulation. In the application of this document, it is assumed that a practically linear relationship exists between the logarithm of the time required to cause the predetermined property change and the reciprocal of the corresponding absolute temperature (Arrhenius relationship). For the valid application of this document, no transition, in particular no first-order transition, is expected to occur in the temperature range under study.
This edition includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous edition:
a) the definition for temperature index (TI) has been updated;
b) requirements for selection of related materials used, e.g. in different colours (5.1.2), have been added;
c) test procedure for thickness sensitivity (5.5 et 6.6) has been added;
d) Annex C "Concepts in earlier editions" has been deleted.