How are paint companies e.g. testing their products for a substained amount of time succesfully? Are they really painting a house and then wait 15 years to see the result?
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There is a group of tests know as “accelerated aging tests” – the general idea is you figure out what causes degradation of your product and expose it to those factors as much as you can, as fast as you can in a controlled manner.
If UV is the key risk, then expose it to high amounts of UV light, if salt water is your problem then you can use a concentrated solution. If it’s abrasion, then you can blast it with abrasive substances. For hot and cold or pressure, often the number of cycles is more important than the duration of exposure so you might transition from a simulated “hot summer” to a “cold winter” lots of time in a short period of time or pressure cycle a pressure tank repeatedly until it cracks (e.g. presurised aircraft fuselages are generally rated for a number of take-offs and landings rather than or in addition to the number of flying hours as that pressure cycling is the key factor).
I’m simplifying a fair bit here on the examples for simplicity and because doing these tests isn’t my field of expertise but it should give you the idea.
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