Hard and soft methods for prediction of antioxidants' activity based on the DSC measurements

Testing of antioxidants' activity in polyolefin is considered. It is proposed to substitute the conventional Long Term Heating Aging (LTHA) test for the method of Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). Values of the Oxidation Initial Temperature measured by the DSC method (X data) are calibrated using the values of Oxidation Induction Period obtained in the LTHA tests (data Y). This data is further processed applying both soft and hard modeling. The hard method is the Non-Linear Regression approach with the traditional confidence interval estimation. The soft method combines the Partial Least Squares regression and the method of Simple Interval Calculation. We compare the results of soft and hard prediction based on the same data set and point out which approach is better in various cases.