Often plastic structures are held together with molded in “clips”. These clips snap into place and hold the structure together. As a result, they see significant stress over their lifetime. Initially the clips operate satisfactorily; however, over time, they can become brittle if exposed to sunlight. The ultra violet wavelength region of natural sunlight may cause the significant degradation of plastics. UV radiation causes photo-oxidative degradation which results in breaking of the polymer chains, produces free radicals. This causes unpredictable failures over time. In this case the degradation is visible as cracking of the plastic . These cracks grow causing clip failure.
