The salt spray test environment, normally formed by 5% salt and 95% water, is usually effective in evaluating equipment or components that are directly exposed to environments such as salt in the ocean , and is sometimes used in the evaluation of connectors for automotive applications. When a car or truck is in motion, water from the tires may splash onto these connectors, especially after a snowfall in the northern winter when salt is applied to the road to speed up the melting of the snow.
Salt spray testing is also sometimes used to evaluate connectors for aerospace applications, such as internal landing gear attachments, where they may also be exposed to salt water or other potentially corrosive chemical contaminative water. Additional applications for salt spray testing are for connectors used for installation in coastal/coastal environments, where salt spray is present in the air.
It is worth stating that there have been many misconceptions about the evaluation of salt spray test results, and many companies only conduct cosmetic inspections of metal surfaces after doing salt spray tests, such as the presence or absence of red rust. This is an imperfect detection method. The standard of verification should also check the reliability of the contact resistance, not just by checking the appearance to assess. For gold plated products the failure mechanism is usually evaluated in combination with the occurrence of pore corrosion, i.e. by MFG (mixed gas streams such as HCl, SO2, H2S) testing; For tin-plated products, YYE usually evaluate combining this with the occurrence of micro-motion corrosion, which is evaluated by vibration and high-frequency temperature and humidity cycling tests.
In addition, there are some connectors that are subjected to salt spray testing that may not be exposed to the salt or marine environment at all when in use, and these products may be installed in a protected environment, in which case the use of salt spray testing does not reflect the results consistent with the actual application.
Post time: Jun-03-2022