Cyclic corrosion testing is intended to be a more realistic way to perform salt spray tests than traditional, steady state exposures. Because actual atmospheric exposures usually include both wet and dry conditions, it makes sense to pattern accelerated laboratory tests after these natural cyclic conditions. Research indicates that, with cyclic corrosion tests, the relative corrosion rates, structure and morphology are more similar to those seen outdoors. Consequently, cyclic tests usually give better correlation to outdoors than conventional salt spray tests. They are effective for evaluating a variety of corrosion mechanisms, including general, galvanic, and crevice corrosion.
Cyclic corrosion testing is intended to produce failures representative of the type found in outdoor corrosive environments. CCT tests expose specimens to a series of different environments in a repetitive cycle. Simple exposures like Prohesion may consist of cycling between salt fog and dry conditions. More sophisticated automotive methods call for multistep cycles that may incorporate immersion, humidity, condensation, along with salt fog and dry-off. Originally, these automotive test procedures were designed to be performed by hand. Laboratory personnel manually moved samples from salt spray chambers to humidity chambers to drying racks, etc. More recently, microprocessor controlled chambers have been used to automate these exposures and reduce variability.
