Transport Industry

Automotive, aerospace, rail and maritime: the materials used in the transport sector are subjected to complex loadings combining mechanical fatigue, climatic variation and chemical attack. With growing regulatory constraints and the shift towards low-carbon powertrains, corrosion control is a strategic issue for vehicle durability and safety. The French Corrosion Institute supports transport industry players from the R&D phase through to the validation of their protection systems.

Our missions

  • Develop accelerated corrosion tests representative of real service conditions.
  • Improve understanding of the corrosion mechanisms of materials and assemblies used in transport.
  • Assess the application of environmentally-friendly protection systems.
  • Study the combined effect of corrosion and fatigue on automotive and aerospace structures and assemblies.
  • Provide real-time corrosion and environmental monitoring solutions for tracking in-service structures and components.

Our services

  • Participation in co-funded collaborative projects (JIPs)
  • Technical consultancy and expertise: material selection, failure analysis
  • Laboratory testing to industry standards: Renault D17/2028, Volvo STD423-0014, VDA621-415, VDA 233-102, ISO 20340, NACE TM0304/TM0404
  • Salt spray, accelerated ageing, corrosion fatigue
  • Real-world tests: exposure on vehicles (Sweden), global marine atmospheric stations
  • Determination of atmospheric corrosivity (C2 to CX for steel)
  • Real-time corrosion and environmental sensor solutions (corrosion potential, humidity, temperature, galvanic coupling currents…) on in-service structures and components, with remote data acquisition
  • Advanced characterisation: electrochemistry, SKP, infrared spectroscopy, SEM, hydrogen analysis