Corrosion Behavior of Al-Mg Alloys with Different Alloying Element Contents in 3.5% NaCl Solution

Abstract

The corrosion behavior was investigated for three Al-Mg aluminum alloys (i.e., 5052, 5083 and 5182 aluminum alloys) with different alloying contents in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution at 35 °C by means of potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, immersion test, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and microscopy techniques. All alloys spontaneously passivate in the test solution, but the pitting corrosion takes place at the intermetallic phases during the long-term immersion test. The comparative analyses indicate that more Mg and less Cr in aluminum alloys result in increases in the passive current density and the pit depth and decreases in the polarization resistance, the pitting potential and the ratio of Al2O3/Al(OH)3 in the product film. However, the differences in the pitting potentials of the three aluminum alloys are smaller than approximately 22 mV. Their pit depth values are less than 110 μm after 120 days of immersion. The three aluminum alloys have relatively high corrosion resistance in the simulated seawater solution.

Keywords

• 5XXX series aluminum alloys
• pitting corrosion
• alloying element
• EIS