ASTM D3359-09

Significance and Use

If a coating is to fulfill its function of protecting or decorating a substrate, it must adhere to it for the expected service life. Because the substrate and its surface preparation (or lack of it) have a drastic effect on the adhesion of coatings, a method to evaluate adhesion of a coating to different substrates or surface treatments, or of different coatings to the same substrate and treatment, is of considerable usefulness in the industry.

The limitations of all adhesion methods and the specific limitation of this test method to lower levels of adhesion (see 1.3) should be recognized before using it. The intra- and inter-laboratory precision of this test method is similar to other widely-accepted tests for coated substrates (for example, Test Method D 2370 and Test Method D 4060), but this is partly the result of it being insensitive to all but large differences in adhesion. The limited scale of 0 to 5 was selected deliberately to avoid a false impression of being sensitive.