We're committed to excellence, and with vast experience manufacturing and supplying environmental and safety products, we're constantly developing and testing new products to make sure we meet our customers' needs.
To help us achieve this, product testing is key.
To ensure the highest possible standards and minimise the possibility of product defects or issues, our in-house Quality Assurance team put every new product through its paces prior to the product launch to ensure our products continue to perform well throughout the product service life.
What tests do we perform?
- UV testing: coloured materials are placed under intense ultraviolet light to simulate years of exposure to sunlight.
- Salt spray testing: Metal components are exposed to concentrated saline to replicate the effects of a marine environment.
- Water Ingress testing: Subjecting our products to high powered water bursts, this testing ensures that our products don’t take in water during heavy rain periods. Some of our electrical products must pass Ingress Protection (IP) tests where they must withstand being fully submerged in water or sprayed with powder and show no signs of ingress.
- Temperature testing: As part of our quality assurance process, all our products are subject to both low and high temperatures. This ensures that we are confident that they will perform well even in harsh temperatures and conditions.
- General testing: hinges, foot pedals and other components undergo testing for longevity through thousands of operations.
- Abuse testing: we try our best to destroy a product to ensure it's tough enough for unsupervised areas - from deliberate vandalism to accidental vehicle collisions, we need to know our products will stand up to anything they might face.
- External testing: many of our products undergo external testing for certification at independent testing laboratories. Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), Transpolis and MIRA test our passively safe highways products to ensure they meet stringent performance standards. Our electrical products are subject to checks by specialists in relation to Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), luminance performance and power consumption. Our highway marker posts undergo a series of physical impact tests to ensure they comply with standards.
- Structural testing: Our shelters and buildings are designed to withstand the rigours of the environments they are used in. Products pass structural assessments and, in some cases, are physically tested at a wind tunnel facility to prove their performance.
What is passively safe?
Passively safe street furniture minimises the severity of injury to occupants of a vehicle that collides with it.
The European Standard BS EN 12767 defines a universal test that establishes the performance of a passively safe roadside structure and displays performance rating in the following format: The first number indicates the class impact speed in kph: 50, 70 or 100kph, using a small (900kg) car in a head-on, frontal impact.
The two letters represent the energy absorbed by the structure: High energy absorbing (HE) support structures slow the vehicle considerably on impact; Low energy (LE) structures measurably slow the vehicle but pose a much lower risk of injury to its occupants; Non-energy absorbing (NE) structures have negligible or nil effect on the speed of the vehicle.
The final number represents the occupant safety level and is based on the Acceleration Severity Index (ASI) and Theoretical Head Impact Velocity (THIV) scales, according to European Standard BS EN 1317-1. The available levels are 1-4, where Level 4 represents the safest, and Level 1 is the most dangerous.
After undergoing tests by accredited independent specialists at MIRA, Transpolis and TRL, the performance rating of Glasdon's products will be clearly visible on the product page.
How is a product weather-resistant?
As part of our quality assurance process, many of our products undergo specific testing to ensure they can withstand harsh weather conditions. These tests include temperature testing, UV testing, water ingress testing and external wind tunnel testing.
To view more of our product testing videos, visit our Youtube Channel.
For more information on our full range of products, contact us or use the Live Chat facility on this website.
