What is an IK rating?

IK ratings defined as IK and a number from 00 to 10, indicating the degree of protection provided by electrical enclosures against external mechanical impacts.

IK Ratings (or impact protection ratings) are the international standard for an enclosure around electrical equipment outlined in 1995 by the European standard BS EN 50102 and later amended in 1997 with IEC 60068-2-75, then followed up in 2002 with the European standard EN62262, the equivalent of the IEC 62262 (2002).

Before the use of IK ratings, a third numeral had been occasionally added to the ingress protection rating (IP rating), for example IP66(9), this nonstandard use was one of the main factors that led to developing a standard. This standard came into effect within 1995 and any conflicting standards withdrawn in 1997.

An IK Rating depicts the conditions in which the test must be carried out namely:

IK Rated products are especially important if they are in public areas, high-traffic areas, commercial environments and areas prone to vandalism.

If a product becomes damaged, this can result in the product failing to work or even in total failure. The damage can often lead to additional costs to repair or replace and may lead to the potential need to close areas to access. A broken product may also lead to a hazard, especially in public areas such as leftover debris or lack of required illumination/information.

Therefore analysing the risk of an impact is essential for deciding if you need a fixture with a high/low IK Rating.

High IK Rated products are in areas where products are likely to be exposed to damage or high impact, such as industrial areas, high traffic areas, public access areas, prisons, schools etc.

Where as, in most cases IK10 would be more than satisfactory, some products require a greater protection and even though the EN60068-2 does not allocate codes above IK10, there have been more extrapolated and designed, in accordance with the testing procedure, meaning products like the 2n Force can claim an IK rating of 30.

The test used is known as the Charpy test.

IK Ratings can be subjective.  This is where the EN 62262 fails, as the manufacturer has significant discretion in choosing where the impacts are made and parts such as hinges and locks are excluded from testing.

Therefore, it is important to understand, the manufacturers testing procedure as the enclosures IK rating can be affected by where the impacts were applied.

Its worth noting that if it has an IK rating, it must also meet the equivalent IP rating. For example if the enclosure maintains its IP66 rating after passing the test for IK06 protection, it can be labelled as both IP66 and IK06. However, if after the enclosure passes testing for IK08 protection but only maintains 1p 54 protection, then it must be labelled as IK068 and IP54 protection or IK06 and IP66, but cannot be labelled as IK08 and IP66 if one test impacts the others results.