Wire Harness Connector Salt Spray Test Guide

      Whether it is for wiring harness accessories such as connectors, terminals, clips or harness assemblies, DV testing cannot bypass the salt spray test. When the car or truck is walking, the position of the harness joint may be exposed to the water splashed on the tire, especially after the snow in the northern winter, the salt will be used to accelerate the melting of the snow on the road. These connectors usually require a salt spray test to verify their corrosion resistance

• Which connectors require salt spray testing?

      Salt spray environments are primarily used in military, special vehicle and marine applications. Under normal circumstances, the salt spray test is carried out in a salt spray test chamber containing 5 points of salt solution, and the exposure time is 48-96 hours.

       Salt spray is highly corrosive to many materials and has been shown to cause the failure of many connector coating systems, including precious and non-precious metal coatings. If salt spray testing is used, connectors that would otherwise be suitable for the application will fail the test. The purpose of the salt spray test is to evaluate the performance of the product, not to damage the product. The salt spray test is suitable for connectors in marine environments. The performance of the salt spray test mainly includes appearance inspection, weight inspection and resistance measurement.

• Which products do not require a salt spray test?

      For vehicle protected areas (eg passenger compartments), it is not necessary to conduct salt spray tests in this environment. In these applications, common failure mechanisms for precious metal coatings are porosity corrosion and corrosion creep, as assessed by MFG (HCl, SO2, H2S and other mixed gas flow) tests. For the contact interface of non-precious metal coatings, the main failure mechanism is fretting corrosion, which was evaluated by vibration and high-frequency temperature and humidity cycle tests.