STONE IMPACT DAMAGE TO AUTOMOTIVE PAINT FINISHES - AN INTRODUCTION TOIMPACT PHYSICS AND IMPACT-INDUCED CORROSION

Stone impact damage to automotive paint finishes has drawn significant attention from both automobile manufacturers and their OEM paint supp liers. Impact damage is a transient and complex phenomenon, a function of a number of variables such as velocity, angle, temperature and mat erial constants for both projectile and the target system. This work p resents a critical review of earlier work and describes an impact phys ics perspective to the stone chip problem. This work also illustrates the application of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to det ect and estimate adhesion loss at the metal/paint interface brought ab out by impact stresses. Two simple procedures to estimate impact induc ed corrosion (IIC) from Bode plots are also described.