Material Compatibility Testing

Overview

Material Compatibility Testing encompasses the protocols and methodologies used to assess whether server components and infrastructure equipment — plastics, elastomers, metals, PCBs, connectors, and mechanical parts — can survive prolonged exposure to dielectric immersion fluids without degradation of physical, electrical, or mechanical properties. Accurate compatibility testing is essential for qualifying both IT equipment and infrastructure hardware (pumps, fittings, seals) for use in immersion cooling deployments.

The OCP Thermochemical Reliability testing protocol defines a four-step process for evaluating components, but as of 2025 the "equivalent service lifetime" duration for the soak tests remains undefined — a critical open issue. More fundamentally, research presented at the 2025 OCP EMEA Summit demonstrated that the standard OCP static compatibility guidelines (336 hours, 80°C, 0.8 L fluid volume) are insufficient for dynamic or moving-part applications: Wilo SE's accelerated aging study showed that polypropylene (PP) pump impellers failed catastrophically after 1,000 hours in Castrol ON fluid — a failure that would not have been detected by the static protocol. This finding has driven OCP to consider separate testing tracks for static versus dynamic component qualification.