On the occasion of the presentation of the Dr. Erichsen Award 2023 to Dr. Karl-Heinz Stellnberger on April 25, 2023, DFO President Jens Rautengarten praised his great achievements in the development of corrosion test methods for the field of industrial painting technology over the past decades. Stellnberger developed more than 144 tests. His inventions, many of them relating to corrosion protection, were patented in many cases. For example, the so-called stacking test for testing the risk of crevice corrosion in sheet metal coils during storage and transport - Stellnberber thus decisively improved the previously common test method by depicting reality much better and also significantly reducing the test time.
Born in Linz, Stellnberger initially trained as a chemical laboratory assistant. Parallel to his work as a chemical laboratory assistant in the corrosion and surface technology department, already at Voestalpine at the time, he continued his education in electrical engineering at night school, and then began his studies in industrial engineering-technical chemistry at the University of Linz. The focus of his scientific work on the topics of pretreatment and corrosion then became apparent in his doctoral thesis entitled "Chromating of Galvanized Thin Sheets with Regard to Cr (VI) Replacement", which he successfully completed at the Chair of Corrosion and Surface Engineering at the University of Erlangen. After that, he worked for Voestalpine in various capacities, but always in the areas of corrosion and corrosion protection. "Corrosion is like a disease that you don't talk about. You can only delay it, but not prevent it," Stellnberger once summed up the driving force behind his tireless involvement with the topic.
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