Sapa Technology has completed an extensive corrosion study of different heat exchangers collected from damaged cars in south Sweden. Much laboratory accelerated testing has been done on automotive heat exchangers and the modes and extent of corrosion in this situation are well known in the industry. However, publications describing the field performance of heat exchangers other than the radiator are absent from the open literature. It was partly to redress this situation and partly to gather data on all heat exchanger performance in a Northern European environment that the present investigation was undertaken. Sets of corroded heat exchangers were retrieved from cars which had been in service in Southern Sweden for 2 to 10 years. The package collected included the radiator, evaporator, condenser and in a few cases the charge air cooler. The heat exchangers contained a variety of material types representing a cross-section of those presently in use. A complete metallurgical examination was performed to define the modes of corrosion developed in the field and to examine the relationship between field corrosion and accelerated laboratory testing. It was found that all the heat exchangers retrieved showed substantially satisfactory field performance without any catastrophic failures. The heat exchanger that suffered the worst corrosion was the condenser with some heavy attack at the braze joints. The radiators showed mainly only light attack and internal corrosion was negligible except in the AA6000 series tubes which showed quite severe internal and external corrosion. No evidence of corrosion was found on evaporators. Of four charge air coolers examined, only one showed light corrosion.
A compilation of corrosion studies of brazed aluminium heat exchangers after field service
2012
10 Seiten, 13 Bilder, 4 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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