Evaluation on the Corrosion Resistance of Three Types of Galvanizing Steels in 1% H2SO4Solution

Abstract

Galvanizing method has been extensively used to the numerous constructional steels such as a guard rail of high way, various types of structural steel for ship building and various types of steels for the industrial fields etc.. However, the galvanized structures would be inevitably corroded rapidly with increasing exposed time because an acid rain due to environmental contamination has been much dropped more and more. Therefore, it has been made an effort to improve the corrosion resistance of the galvanizing film through various methods. In this study, comparison evaluation on the corrosion resistance of three types of the samples, that is, the hot dip galvanizing with pure zinc(GI), the hot dip galvanizing of alloy bath with zinc and aluminum(GL) and the pure zinc galvanizing steel immersed again to chromate treatment bath(Chro.)were investigated using electrochemical methods in 1% <TEX>$H_2SO_4$</TEX> solution. The Chro. and GI samples exhibited the highest and lowest corrosion resistance respectively in 1% <TEX>$H_2SO_4$</TEX> solution, however, the GI sample revealed the highest impedance at 0.01 Hz due to its high resistance polarization caused by corrosion products deposited on the surface, while Chro. sample exhibited the lowest impedance at 0.01 Hz because of little corrosion products on the surface. Consequently, it is suggested that the chromate treated steel has a better corrosion resistance in acid environment compared to pure galvanizing(GI) or galvalume(GL) steels.