Adhesives.org Standard Practice for Evaluating Adhesion of Installed Weatherproofing Sealant Joints ASTM C1521 -08

This practice describes field tests to determine the adhesive and cohesive characteristics of an installed sealant joint, by manually placing a strain on the sealant. The sealant to be tested shall be fully cured. The results of this method can be used in conjunction with other information to determine the overall performance of the sealant joint. The user of this practice should define the other parameters to be evaluated such as cleaning of the substrate, depth control of the sealant, sealant profile, etc. This method describes both nondestructive and destructive procedures. The destructive procedure stresses the sealant in such a way as to cause either cohesive or adhesive failure of the sealant or cohesive failure of the substrate where deficient substrate conditions exist. The objective is to characterize the adhesive/cohesive performance of the sealant on the specific substrate by applying whatever strain is necessary to effect failure of the sealant bead. It is possible that the strain applied to the sealant bead may result in the failure of a deficient substrate before effecting a failure in the sealant.