Know that sickening feeling when you exit the grocery store and find your car has been banged up by a runaway shopping cart? One day, these memories may represent just a bad memory if auto body manufacturers make use of a new suite of tests developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and three industry partners. Data from these tests could eventually help vehicle exteriors better defend themselves against dings, dents, scratches and things that go bump on the highway.

In a new paper in the journal Progress in Organic Coatings,¹ researchers at four organizations—NIST and industry partners Eastman Chemical Co., the Hyundai America Technical Center and Anton Paar USA—describe three versions of a fast, reliable laboratory method for simulating scratching processes on automobile clearcoats (the uppermost, or surface, layer of an exterior polymer composite coating). The tests are designed to give manufacturers a better understanding of the mechanisms behind those processes so that future coating materials can be made more scratch resistant and resilient.