ORIGINAL PAPER Development of the Scale Adhesion Assessment Using a Tensile Testing Machine Equipped with a CCD Camera Thanasak Nilsonthi 1 • Wannapha Issaard 1 • Somrerk Chandra-ambhorn 1 Received: 19 November 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract The objective of this work was to develop a scale adhesion assessment method by using a tensile testing machine equipped with a CCD camera to instantaneously observe the scale failure during a given exposure. The sample studied was carbon steel oxidised at 900 °C in synthetic air for 2 min, giving the scale thickness of 3.45 lm. The strain initiating the first spallation was determined to semi-quantitatively assess the scale adhesion, which was 3.71 ± 0.86% in the present study. The Galerie–Dupeux model based on U.R. Evans’ criterion was used to quantify the adhesion energy, which was 345 ± 39 J m -2 at the strain initiating the first spallation. However, during the tensile loading the scale spalled with the increased strain and at each strain there existed a particular value of the adhesion energy. To take into account the statistical nature of the scale spallation at different strains with different spallation ratios, the present work proposed the quantification of the average adhesion energy by weighting the adhesion energy at each strain by the increase in the spallation ratio taking place at that strain. Owing to the developed testing method that could record the spallation ratio as a function of the strain, the weighted average adhesion energy at strains up to 10% was quantified giving the value of 530 ± 9Jm -2 . This energy represented the scale adhesion characteristics not only at the strain that scale firstly spalled but in a wider range of the imposed strains. & Somrerk Chandra-ambhorn somrerk.c@eng.kmutnb.ac.th Thanasak Nilsonthi thanasak.n@eng.kmutnb.ac.th Wannapha Issaard i_wannapha@hotmail.com 1 High Temperature Corrosion Research Centre, Department of Materials and Production Technology Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, 1518 Pracharat 1 Road, Wongsawang, Bangsue, Bangkok 10800, Thailand 123 Oxid Met DOI 10.1007/s11085-016-9679-z