Abstract
Increasingly stringent environmental regulations in different sectors of industry, especially the aeronautical sector, suggest the need for more investigations regarding the effect of environmentally friendly corrosion protective processes. Passivation is a finishing process that makes stainless steels more rust resistant, removing free iron from the steel surface resulting from machining operations. This results in the formation of a protective oxide layer that is less likely to react with the environment and cause corrosion. The most commonly used passivating agent is nitric acid. However, it is know that high levels of toxicity can be generated by using this agent. In this work, a study has been carried out into the electrochemical behavior of 15-5PH (precipitation hardening) and 17-4PH stainless steels passivated with (a) citric and (b) nitric acid solutions for 60 and 90 min at 49 °C, and subsequently exposed to an environment with chlorides. Two electrochemical techniques were used: electrochemical noise (EN) and potentiodynamic polarization curves (PPC) according to ASTM G199-09 and ASTM G5-13, respectively. The results obtained indicated that, for both types of steel, the passive layer formed in citric acid as passivating solution had very similar characteristics to that formed with nitric acid. Furthermore, after exposure to the chloride-containing solution and according with the localization index (LI) values obtained, the stainless steels passivated in citric acid showed a mixed type of corrosion, whereas the steels passivated in nitric acid showed localized corrosion. Overall, the results of the values derived show very low and similar corrosion rates for the stainless steels passivated with both citric and nitric acid solutions.
Highlights
Corrosion in the aeronautical industry remains a major problem that directly affects safety, economic, and logistical issues
The potentiodynamic polarization curves obtained for the 15-5PH and 17-4PH stainless steels passivated for 60 min and 90 min in (a) citric acid and (b) nitric acid, and immersed in 5 wt. % NaCl solution are shown in Figure 5.The results for citric acid passivation (Figure 5a) show that the lower
Samples of 15-5PH and 17-4PH stainless steel were passivated in (a) citric acid and (b) nitric acid baths and exposed in a 5 wt. % NaCl solution. Their electrochemical behavior was studied by electrochemical noise and potentiodynamic polarization
Summary
Corrosion in the aeronautical industry remains a major problem that directly affects safety, economic, and logistical issues. It is well know that aggressive ions, especially chloride ions Cl-, affect the protecting nature of the passive film on stainless steels causing its breakdown This leads to localized attack, mainly pitting corrosion [25,26]. Bragaglia et al [27] studied the potentiodynamic polarization behavior of passivated citric and nitric acid baths) and unpassivated AISI 304 stainless steel samples after 1 h in 3.5 wt. Suresh and Mudali [31] studied the corrosion of UNS S30403 stainless steel in 0.05 M ferric chloride (FeCl3 ) by spectral, statistical, and wavelet methods to deduce the corrosion mechanism They found a good correlation of roll-off slopes derived from power spectral analysis and statistical parameters such as standard deviation, localization index (LI), and kurtosis with pitting as the corrosion mechanism. The aim of the present work is the study of the electrochemical behavior of 15-5PH and 17-4PH stainless steels passivated in nitric and citric acid and exposed to a 5 wt. % NaCl aqueous solution by PPC and EN
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