| The voluntary withdrawal of chromated copper arsenate for use in residential construction (December 31, 2003) has led to increased use of newer wood preservatives such as alkaline copper quaternary, copper azole, and micronized copper systems. One difficulty in designing for corrosion performance with new preservative systems is the amount of time it takes to obtain results, previous exposure tests have taken up to 20 years. Standardized methods for measuring corrosion in wood use high temperature, high humidity environments and it is unclear how to extrapolate these corrosion rates to realistic conditions.;This dissertation explores the mechanism of corrosion of metals in contact with wood and discusses the practical implications of these results for developing a rapid test method. Specifically, this dissertation presents a rapid test method developed by the author with correlation to long-term exposure tests for certain combinations of metals and preservatives. The new method was evaluated for steel and galvanized steel on six different wood treatments. The data suggest that the corrosion mechanism involves the reduction of cupric ions from the preservative and that the migration of the cupric ions through wood is not the rate determining step. |
