Work has been in progress for several years to directly measure the corrosive severity of a variety of Air Force bases worldwide. The work has been done for several very diverse reasons. One has been in support of
studies to examine the effects of lubricants/CPCs on avionics reliability using the F-16 aircraft as the test vehicle. In this case, corrosion monitoring has been done at ground level to document the external conditions in which the aircraft are based.
A second reason has been to provide a test for current mathematical models which attempt to predict corrosion rates based on available environmental data. A third has been to provide "hard" data on a number of relevant materials and in the process gain additional knowledge about the base environments. The latter refers, in particular, to data relating to total reactive chlorides and/or humidity levels which are recognized to be major "drivers" of corrosion processes. A third reason, has been to develop and validate simple, inexpensive, and reliable methods for obtaining such data. To date more than 50 Air Force sites worldwide have been surveyed. This paper will review the related results from both studies. It will show the broad statistical distribution of environmental severity levels at active airfields and which differ by a factor of nearly 200:1 . Over this range, the degradation rates of gold plated test connector have been studied and it will be shown that even at the lowest levels of severity reliability can be adversely affected if the external environment is allowed to ingress to the electrical interface. Studies have also been made on the attributes of commercially available CPCs conforming to MIL- 81309E and 87177A. The data will show that a very few of these materials can provide almost total corrosion inhibition at electrical interfaces while posing no know engineering risk. At the same time, some of these same
materials appear to be unacceptable/high risk as judged by contemporary standards. This work has been extended to flight tests on a large population of aircraft. Selected CPCs were
applied to avionics I/O connectors on selected LRUs and operational performance was studied over a 2+ year period. Current data show significant improvements in performance as measured by reduced CND rates, lower removals, and reduced maintenance hours. At the same time, the feedback from field personnel regarding implementation was positive.