4. Checking tropicalization

Before marketing tropicalized equipment, it should be tested to ensure that it can withstand severe environmental conditions. For further details on testing, please refer to the relevant standards documents (cf. ) and [6] .

Various types of environmental testing can be applied. Generally speaking, they are aimed at one of three objectives:

• control of the manufacture of a product; these are control or qualification tests;

• the selection of a material or coating for a given use; this is known as selection testing;

• determining the reliability of a piece of equipment or a part of it (sub-assembly, components) for a given application; this is known as reliability testing....