Reinvestigating the Link Between Lab Test Results and Real-World Exposure: A Study on Grain Cracking Performance of Architectural Paints

By Xin Li, Keith Task, Shawn Overcash, Jack Johnson, Nicholas Foley, BASF Corp. USA

Correlating paint film integrity in the lab with wood grain crack resistance in real-world exposure is a challenging task. In 2020, we reported on early correlations between adhesion and film mechanics that when combined could fit a grain cracking predictive model to outdoor weathering. In this study, we sought to further challenge our own model by greatly expanding our study to include 79 more paints on various substrates. Our aim was paint film mechanical properties and real-world exposure performance and to test the validity of our early model.