Six Environmental Chambers for NIST 6-Port SPHERE

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Materials and Structural Systems Division’s (MSSD) Infrastructure Materials Group (IMG) IMG conducts research to predict performance of materials composing US buildings and infrastructure. Research is performed on these items throughout their service life by developing a fundamental understanding of the performance properties and the degradation mechanisms when exposed to intended (real world) or accelerated (laboratory) loading environments. IMG has developed an integrating sphere-based high UV intensity chamber, so called “SPHERE” (Simulated Photodegradation via High Energy Radiant Exposure) weathering device to conduct laboratory exposure under different environmental conditions. The NIST 2m Sphere with 32 environmental chambers has been in operation for more than 20 years. NIST is also working on a more commercially viable version of this instrument, the NIST 0.5m 6-port SPHERE.

The commercial version of the 0.5m 6-port SPHERE based on NIST’s design have been successfully produced in collaboration with Labsphere, INC., however the environmental chambers for the 6-port SPHERE are still designed and built in NIST using a similar design to these chambers in 2m SPHERE. To produce a turnkey version of a 6-port SPHERE weathering device, six updated commercially viable environmental chambers are needed to accommodate the new 6-port SPHERE.  Recently, NIST has designed an updated environmental (Temperature and humidity controlled) chamber utilizing commercially available components as much as possible to replace old environmental chambers used for 2m SPHERE.  The first 6 environmental chambers were constructed and tested at various temperature and humidity conditions to meet IMG research needs.  NIST now requires the production of six environmental chambers (control and sample chamber boxes) for the 2nd NIST 6-port SPHERE.

NOTE: Reference attachments for complete Combined Synopsis/Solicitation. This is a re-solicitation for Combined Synopsis/Solicitation 1333ND22QNB730373.