Abstract: The article studies the corrosion capability and specialty of the zinc, cadmium coating of high-strength steel by three accelerated corrosion tests such as neutral salt spray test, accelerated salt spray test, complex multi-factor accelerated corrosion test, which were designed for simulating the marine atmospheric corrosion environment, also we analyze the relativity of accelerated corrosion result in the lab and XIAMEN marine atmospheric corrosion result. The results show that, the accelerating effect of neutral salt spray test is definite for zinc plating, while the corrosive speed of cadmium coating is slow comparatively, moreover the results have a bad relativity with that of corrosion in the outfield’s environment, We adopts accelerated salt spray test containing the environmental factors of Cl^-,SO^2-₃,NO^-₃,SO^2-₄,pH and so on, the condition of accelerated salt spray have a preferable accelerating effect for both zinc and cadmium coating, and there is a definite relativity existing in the results between accelerated salt spray test and the outfield’s environment. The complex multi-factor accelerated corrosion test is a method making the ambience of SO₂,the humidity and the temperature, the irradiation of ultraviolet radiation and the accelerated salt spray into a complex corrosion environment, where the corrosive speed of zinc and cadmium coating is obviously accelerated, the results of complex multi-factor accelerated corrosion test and the outfield’s atmospheric corrosion have a linear relationship and the linearly dependent coefficient is 0.9889, which is a preferable evidence for the relativity of the two tests.

Key words: high-strength steel, zinc coating, cadmium coating, accelerated corrosion testing