DO-160 Section 13 is one of the environmental qualification tests defined in RTCA DO-160.

What DO-160 Section 13 Covers, and Why It Exists

Section 13 determines whether equipment materials are vulnerable to fungal growth under conditions that favor it: high humidity, warm temperature, and the presence of inorganic salts. Natural, carbon-based materials are most susceptible, cellulose materials like wood, paper, and natural-fiber textiles, plus animal- and vegetable-based adhesives, leather, greases, and oils, and some synthetics such as certain PVC formulations are vulnerable too. The standard specifically notes this test shouldn’t be run after salt spray or sand and dust testing, because residual salt or sand can skew fungal growth and invalidate the result.

The Typical Failure Pattern

This is a long-documented materials failure mode rather than a single-incident one, and it’s worth being honest about that: there isn’t a clean modern civil Airworthiness Directive tied purely to fungus in the public record. The evidence is historical and material-driven, paper-wrap and cellulose-based components failing in humid tropical service, fungal growth bridging insulators and forming conductive paths, acidic metabolic byproducts corroding metals and degrading plastics, which is exactly the history that drove today’s non-nutrient-material and conformal-coating requirements. The failure is slow and material-level, not dramatic.

Why This Matters for Galley Equipment

Equipment that produces steam and condensation as part of normal operation, ovens, water boilers, espresso machines, creates the warm, humid microenvironment this section cares about, more consistently than most other cabin equipment. That makes gasket, seal, and adhesive material selection a real decision here rather than a checkbox, particularly for any organic-content components.

How to Mitigate This

• Scrutinize gasket, seal, and adhesive material choices for any equipment that runs warm and humid regularly
• Favor non-nutrient materials and appropriate coatings rather than relying on the test alone to catch a poor material choice
• Sequence this test before, not after, salt spray or sand and dust testing on the same unit

Further reading: NTSB accident report archive.

How Eminent Helps: For equipment that lives in its own warm, humid microclimate, fungus resistance is really a material-selection question settled long before the test. Getting those gasket, seal, and adhesive choices right early is part of the design support we provide. See how we support galley insert programs.