Optimizing salt spray distribution in salt spray chambers
In many salt spray chambers, fall-out rates are monitored throughout the chamber to ensure that these rates fall well within standards. In many chambers, the volume isn’t used optimally because certain area’s results fall outside the specifications.
In general, there are two main reasons for optimizing the chamber fall-out rates. Firstly testing space is enlarged if you can manage to fall within the standard’s fall-out rates specifications. Secondly and most importantly, the results of multiple samples in one chamber are much more closer to each other.
Make the most of your salt spray chamber
If you want to optimise the distribution of your salt spray chamber, you can opt for a so-called second atomiser instead of only one atomiser as standard supplied. By doing so, the salt spray can be directed and set much more accurately. In the figure below you can find the standard distribution of the fall-out rates after 4 adjustment steps with two atomisers.
There are many options to adjust the distribution within the chamber: distance between atomisers, horizontal position and angle of the atomiser(s).
The aim was to reach a distribution as close as possible to 1,5 mL/80cm².hour, the setpoint for ASTM B117 standard. Testing chamber was an Ascott S1000iP chamber of 1.000 liter testing volume. The chamber homogenity is enhanced significantly by this option.
