Why this test matters
Products outdoors don't face sunlight, salt, and cold in isolation, they face all of it, in sequence, season after season. Testing against just one stressor at a time can miss failure modes that only show up when a coating already weakened by UV meets salt spray, or when a material already stressed by heat is suddenly hit with cold. The cyclic ageing test cycles your product through solar exposure, salt spray, condensation, and temperature extremes in a single repeating program, giving you a far more realistic picture of long-term durability than any single-stress test can. It's especially valuable for automotive parts, offshore and marine structures, and any coated product that has to survive a genuinely harsh, variable outdoor environment.
How the test works
Your sample runs through repeating cycles that combine several stress phases: UV or solar exposure, salt spray, humid or condensing conditions, and temperature extremes, including cold down to -20°C for demanding applications. For offshore and marine-grade coating systems, we run a program of 25 cycles, roughly 4200 hours, combining QUV exposure, salt spray, and cold climate exposure in sequence. For automotive applications, we can run a cyclic corrosion program of 60 to 80 cycles alternating temperature, humidity, and salt spray, matching how the industry actually validates coatings against road salt and weather. Corrosion and material condition are checked at intervals throughout, not just at the end.
What you learn from this test
You get a realistic durability picture that reflects how your product actually ages outdoors, not just how it holds up against one stressor. Results include corrosion progression, coating degradation, and any interaction effects where one type of exposure makes the next one worse, alongside the visual and mechanical changes a single-stress test would also catch. This lets you validate a coating system for a genuinely demanding environment, compare protective systems under realistic combined stress, and back up a durability claim with a test that mirrors what your product will actually face.
