Dr. Erichsen Prize of the DFO awarded to Dr. Karl-Heinz Stellnberger

With the award of the Dr. Erichsen Prize 2023 to Dr. Karl-Heinz Stellnberger, the DFO honors a personality who has significantly advanced the development of corrosion testing methods over many years. In his laudatory speech, Jens Rautengarten, as president of DFO e.V., paid tribute to Dr. Stellnberger's life's work. During his time at Voestalpine, Dr. Stellnberger and his staff developed far more than 144 tests. Some of the inventions were also turned into patents, including many that describe ways of protecting against corrosion. In his laudation, Rautengarten highlighted the "stacking test" as an example. During transport and storage of sheet metal coils, condensate is formed due to temperature/humidity fluctuations. This gets into the gaps between the coils via capillary action, where it leads to very dangerous crevice corrosion. An older stack test already existed for testing, which was then optimized so well that it comes much closer to reality. At the same time, the test time was significantly reduced. The classic salt spray test according to DIN EN ISO 9227 could also be optimized. Dr. Stellnberger replaced the conventional nozzles in an old aquarium with ultrasonic fogging, which makes it possible to follow the development of corrosion almost in real time. Every two hours, a photo is taken; strung together, this produces a film of the development of the corrosion. Dr. Stellnberger also used an unusual vessel as a test container for another method, which is why the method for rapid corrosion testing was then also called the "cucumber jar test. In the vessel, the scratched coating is exposed to a five-percent sodium chloride solution in the lower half and not simply to air, but to pure oxygen above. The test period can thus be reduced from 12 weeks to 12 days.

Dr. Stellnberger was born on April 7, 1964 in Linz, Austria. After leaving school, he initially trained as a chemical laboratory assistant. Parallel to his professional activity as a chemical laboratory assistant in the corrosion and surface technology department at Voestalpine, he completed further training in electrical engineering at night school at the Higher Vocational College. This was followed by a degree in industrial engineering and technical chemistry at the University of Linz. The diploma thesis: "Transfer quantities of monovalent cations in acetonitrile-water mixtures" does not yet indicate his later activity. However, references to the topics of pretreatment and corrosion can then be found in his doctoral thesis, which he carried out at the Chair of Corrosion and Surface Technology at the University of Erlangen under Prof. Martin Stratmann (now President of the Max Planck Society) with the title "Chromating of galvanized thin sheets with regard to Cr (VI) replacement". He then worked for Voestalpine in various capacities, but always in the areas of corrosion and corrosion protection. Dr. Stellnberger himself described what drives him: "Corrosion is like a disease that you don't talk about. You can only delay it, but not prevent it." In addition to his full-time work for Voestalpine, Dr. Stellnberger is active in numerous committees, including the VDEh (German Iron and Steel Association), VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) and the DFO.