Engineers use corrosion chambers to study different materials in systems that must meet particular corrosion requirements, or to expose an electronic component to the environment to see what happens over time.
“Instead of waiting for 30 years of operation outside under the sun, we bring our PV [photovoltaic] panels inside to expose them to much higher concentrations of light or put them in thermal chambers to simulate the equivalent of years of temperature cycles,” said Sandia’s Olga Lavrova. Accelerated lifetime experiments show in six months what could happen over decades, she added.
The bigger challenge, Sandia notes, is studying the mechanisms underlying corrosion. The chemistry of the atmosphere, the particles landing on surfaces, relative humidity and temperature all play a role, but the difficult part is understanding how these factors are connected and interact with materials.
