Temperature is the most fundamental—and most brutal—physical parameter influencing the reliability of materials, components and complete systems. GB/T 2423.1, GB/T 2423.2, GJB 150.3A, GJB 150.4A, DO-160 Section 4/5, IEC 60068-2-1/-2 and MIL-STD-810H all quantify requirements for temperature slew rate, dwell time, heat load and measurement uncertainty.

Dust testing, codified in GB/T 2423.37 and IEC 60068-2-68, is now mandatory for proving the sealing integrity and reliability of military, automotive, photovoltaic and rail-transit products. Direct test outlays—consumables, energy, labour and depreciation—seldom exceed one to three per cent of the selling price, yet hidden expenses triggered by poor chamber selection—repeat tests, invalid data or after-sales downtime—can leap to eight to twelve per cent.

The thermal shock test chamber is a cornerstone of environmental-reliability testing. Within tens of seconds it transfers specimens between extreme high- and low-temperature zones, revealing mechanical stress, electrical degradation, and chemical instability induced by rapid thermal expansion and contraction.

The salt fog chamber is the core instrument for evaluating the corrosion resistance of materials and protective coatings. Its measurement repeatability and reproducibility are directly affected by installation quality.

A sand and dust test chamber is the core item of equipment used to simulate desert, arid and industrial high-dust environments. The quality of its operation directly determines a product’s IP protection rating, reliability life and market-access qualification.

Although both thermal-shock and steady-state temperature/humidity tests fall under the umbrella of “weathering verification”, they differ fundamentally in physical modelling, control logic and safety strategy.

With the continuous tightening of ingress-protection requirements in automotive electronics, low-voltage power distribution and photovoltaic industries, repeatable, quantifiable and traceable artificial-rain testing has replaced the traditional “splash-and-inspect” approach and become the core means of verifying sealing performance.

Product reliability is no longer governed solely by design rules and manufacturing precision; it is equally decided by a product’s ability to survive sudden climatic extremes. Among all environmental stressors, rapid temperature change is the single most frequent root-cause of field failures in electronic components, automotive assemblies, and aerospace hardware.

Salt-spray corrosion testing is one of the most frequently used and fastest accelerated methods for evaluating the corrosion resistance of materials and their protective coatings. In a test chamber a salt solution is atomized by compressed air into a uniform fog that is continuously or intermittently sprayed onto specimens in a sealed, temperature- and humidity-controlled space.

The high-low temperature test chamber is the cornerstone of environmental reliability testing. Its cooling rate dictates test duration and data validity. Field data from 500+ chambers over ten years show that “slow cooling” accounts for 38 % of all malfunctions, second only to “no cooling”.