The New Era in Corrosion

Testing
By Sean Fowler
Q-Lab Corporation, 800 Canterbury Road, Westlake OH 44145, USA
TECHNICAL ARTICLE LF-8116

In recent years, cyclic corrosion

standards in the automotive
industry have encouraged
manufacturers of test chambers
to offer new control features.
Automotive OEMs required these
new features in order to simu-
late actual automotive corrosion
and to improve repeatability and
reproducibility of tests.

It took the corrosion testing industry several years to improve the state of the art,
but today the next generation of corrosion chambers, such as the new Q-FOG
CRH, offers users unprecedented control over several critical parameters that
affect corrosion types and rates. In addition to describing these new features, the
article offers a brief history of corrosion testing leading up to the recent developments.

It has been an exciting few years in the fields of weathering and corrosion testing. Last year, PPCJ
published an article on a Revolution in Weathering Testing (September, 2013). That revolution was
a decade in the making, and what is happening in corrosion testing today is no less significant. This
article will briefly look at the history of corrosion test standards, where the corrosion testing industry is
today, and how recent corrosion chamber innovations open the door to better standards and a revolution
in corrosion testing.

100 Years of Salt Spray Testing

One hundred years ago, corrosion engineers developed tests using a 5% solution of sodium chloride
delivered through compressed-air operated, atomizing spray nozzles under constant temperature conditions.
This corrosion test continues as the most widely used around the world and is standardized in ASTM B117
and ISO 9227. Although effective for many quality control applications, this test has been shown again
and again to have poor correlation to real life corrosion, especially for materials with organic coatings.

Early Cyclic Corrosion Tests

The path to modern corrosion testing dates back to work done in England in the 1960s. Cyclic Prohesion
(Protection is Adhesion) tests incorporated wet/dry cycling and the addition of ammonium sulfate to a
dilute sodium chloride solution. Currently, this test is standardized in ASTM G85, Annex 5 and is commonly
referenced for use in industrial maintenance coatings. Recently, the American Architectural Manufacturers
Association replaced the traditional salt spray test with Prohesion in its 2605 standard for high performance
coatings on aluminum extrusions and panels used on windows and other building fenestration products,
demonstrating the continued significance of this method.

In the early 1990s, researchers at The Sherwin-Williams Company published research in which coated
metal panels were tested according to an alternating schedule of exposure in a fluorescent UV weathering
test chamber (QUV tester) and to the Prohesion test. Their work led to the development of ASTM D5894
and ISO 11997-2. Follow-up studies confirmed that this method achieved better correlation to outdoor
corrosion for several coating systems used in industrial maintenance applications. The method has been
used and modified for highway construction and maintenance and in the petrochemical industry.
 Automotive Corrosion Tests
As in the field of weathering testing, much of the
innovation in corrosion testing has occurred in the
automotive industry. Automotive cyclic corrosion
tests of the 1980s and 1990s added condensing
humidity to the wet and dry cycles pioneered earlier.
Corrosive solutions replicated harsh road conditions
from the use of salts to melt snow and ice.

These tests typically start with application of a

corrosive solution by a traditional compressed-air
atomizing spray nozzle, followed by a dry-off period.
This creates a salt residue on the test panels that
is dissolved in condensing humidity, re-initializing
corrosion reactions on the surface or in scribes Corrosion coupons such as the ones pictured here
through the coating. For many environments, are used to quantify the amount of corrosion during
particularly automobiles on wintry salt-treated roads, tests and verify chamber performance.
these tests often correlate well to outdoor corrosion
and have significantly benefitted the industry in its
work to improve corrosion resistance.

Cyclic corrosion standards were defined as those

including several environmental conditions, includ- coupons. General Motors addressed control of
ing corrosive fog conditions, ambient or dwell transition periods when it replaced the popular
conditions without heat or moisture application in GM 9540P standard with GMW 14872 in 2006.
the chamber, humid conditions to re-wet specimens When published, the new standard specified
without additional corrosive solution application, the relative humidity during ambient and dry phases
and dry-off conditions at low relative humidity and of the test and included requirements for ramp
elevated temperature. These tests were the state- times between phases. Japanese standards writers
of-the-art throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, followed a similar path in refining the popular CCT I
but deficiencies existed. and CCT IV cycles in JASO and Nissan standards,
which require very rapid transition times between
The Challenges of Modern phases.
Corrosion Testing GM had departed from traditional methods even
A stubborn problem with the first generations of before GMW 14872. GM 9540P was developed as a
automotive cyclic corrosion standards has been benchtop test where specimens were sprayed then
repeatability and reproducibility. The causes of moved from ambient lab conditions to a humidity
variability in testing have not been well documented chamber. It was adapted to be run in corrosion test
or published, so the use of corrosion coupons has chambers. However, revisions of the original GM
proliferated in an attempt to manage the problems. 9540P standard removed use of atomizing salt fog
Corrosion coupons are standardized masses of using compressed air in favor of direct spray onto
metal that are weighed before and after standard test specimens. The goals of the direct spray were
exposures. The amount of mass loss per cycle to quickly saturate test specimens and gently wash
is often specified in standards. However, the use off salt residue from previous applications without
of coupons has not addressed the real problem: removing corrosion byproducts. Traditional salt fog
inadequacies in test standards and the test is incapable of achieving rapid saturation and takes
chambers designed to meet them. In too many too long to wash off salt residue.
cases, people who encounter problems meeting
the coupon loss rates specified in their standards GMW 14872 begins with a brief period of direct
have had few control options to adjust. This is the spray of the corrosive solution that may be repeated
challenge of modern corrosion testing. depending on the specific automotive component
being tested. However, the important innovation in
Most corrosion in the laboratory occurs during tran- the standard is its emphasis on a relatively slow,
sitions between wet and dry phases of the tests. one-hour transition period from the ambient stage
Controlling these periods is a key factor in controlling to the humid stage and an even slower three-hour
corrosion rates and, thus, mass loss of standardized transition from the humid phase to the dry phase.
2
 When published, the new standard initially caused
confusion in the corrosion testing community
because test chambers on the market at the time
were incapable of achieving all aspects of the test
without modifications or manual intervention during
the test. Some retrofitted additional spray capabilities
and automatic lid lifters onto their chambers, while
others created tests that combined the automatic
capabilities of their chambers with the manual
Vent
benchtop approach GM used to create the method.
Lid
Controller
Solution Specimens

Figure 2 - Linear transition time from wet to dry

Reservoir

A Step Forward in Laboratory conditions, which can be programmed in some

Bubble corrosion chambers.
Corrosion Tower Compressed
Air In
Fog
Chamber Nozzle
Heater
Modern corrosion test chambers, such as the new
Q-FOG CRH chamber, include greater control of Pump

the environmental conditions and no longer require Solution

To Pump

manual intervention to meet tests such as GMW

14872. The first improvement has been the addition
of controlled relative humidity (See Figure 1).
Diffuser

Air Heater

Blower

Humidification
Air Pre-Conditioner Figure 3 - Ramp times can be programmed in some
Air Pre-Conditioner
Compressed
Air In
modern corrosion chambers, such as the Q-FOG CRH.
D.I.
Blower Water In
Module

Conditioned Air

Conditioned
Air
Another source of variability addressed by the
Q-FOG CRH is control of corrosive spray. The
user is able to program spray on/off times which
Figure 1 - A cyclic corrosion test chamber that allows allows them to precisely control the volume of spray
control of relative humidity. applied to specimens. This turns out to be another
effective way to control corrosion coupon rates in
the GMW 14872 method, which only states that
test samples and coupons shall be thoroughly wet/
This is critical for test phases that call for dry or dripping. Traditional salt fog application emphasizes
ambient conditions. Laboratory environmental fog uniformity and avoiding direct impingement,
conditions, which vary depending on geographical while the new methods emphasize spray which
climate conditions, are not often controlled with the quickly wets specimens and washes away salt resi-
precision necessary to control the transition times due, leaving time for long transitions to other test
between phases. Because of its relative humidity phases (See Figure 4).
control system and air pre-conditioner which
supplies warm or cool, dry air into the chamber, the
Q-FOG CRH can achieve nearly all test conditions
automotive corrosion engineers have specified.

Controlled relative humidity is only sufficient

when combined with adjustable ramp times due
to the importance of wet/dry transition times. The Shower Module
Assembly
GMW 14872 test requires slow, linear ramp times,
Shower
while other methods require as fast as possible Pump
ramping or minimum ramp times. The Q-FOG CRH
and other modern corrosion chambers allow the
user to program linear (See Figure 2) or rapid ramp
times (See Figure 3) and make adjustments in Figure 4 - Spray function in a modern cyclic corrosion
order to change the mass loss of corrosion coupons. test chamber.

3
A Practical Problem Addressed
One significant nuisance of GMW 14872 and the similar SAE J2334 methods is precipitated calcium carbonate
forming in spray nozzles and plumbing when sodium bicarbonate and calcium chloride combine in solution.
Precipitates clog nozzles, reducing the amount of spray reaching the specimens. This has a measurable impact on
coupon mass loss rates and is a common complaint of users of these standards. The Q-FOG CRH addresses this
problem with an automatic nozzle cleaning function which minimizes calcium carbonate formation and two-stage
filtration to remove any that does form. Cleaning nozzles in acetic acid may continue as a necessary maintenance
function, but these approaches should reduce the labor required to keep the system operating properly. If all these
approaches fail, the Q-FOG CRH includes a system to monitor the spray flow rate and alert the operator if it is
reduced for any reason.

Ready for the Corrosion Testing Revolution

Modern corrosion test chambers provide better control of the environments corrosion engineers believe are critical
in making laboratory tests realistic, fast, and repeatable. Over time, test standards need to be updated so that test
chamber users are given proper guidance on controlling their tests. The good news is that modern corrosion test
chambers give users control options that their predecessors lacked. Although the corrosion testing revolution has
been in the works for a long time, the technology to make it happen is widely available today.

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