E DIN EN IEC 60216-1 VDE 0304-21:2025-10

This part of IEC 60216 specifies the general conditions of hot storage and procedures for determining long-term thermal characteristics, and provides guidance on the use of provisions and guidelines in the other parts of this standard. Although these methods were originally developed for use with electrical insulating materials and simple combinations of such materials, they are now considered to have wider applicability and are therefore more widely used in the assessment of materials not intended for use as electrical insulators. In the application of this standard, it is assumed that there is a practically linear relationship between the logarithm of the time required for a given property change and the reciprocal of the associated absolute temperature (Arrhenius relationship). For a meaningful application of this standard, there should be no transition in the analysed temperature range, in particular no first-order transition. In the following, the term "insulating materials" is always used in the meaning "insulating materials and simple combinations of such materials".