Furnace Brazing Parameters Optimized by Taguchi Method and Corrosion Behavior of Tube-Fin System of Automotive Condensers

Abstract

Controlled atmosphere brazing has a widespread industrial use in the production of aluminum automotive heat exchangers. Good-quality joints between the components depend on the initial condition of materials as well as on the brazing process parameters. In this work, the Taguchi method was used to optimize the brazing parameters with respect to corrosion performance for tube-fin mini-assemblies of an automotive condenser. The experimental design consisted of five factors (micro-channel tube type, flux type, peak temperature, heating rate and dwell time), with two levels each. The corrosion behavior in acidified seawater solution pH 2.8 was evaluated through potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were used to analyze the microstructural features in the joint zone. The results showed that the parameters that most significantly affect the corrosion rate are the type of flux and the peak temperature. The optimal conditions were: micro-channel tube with 4.2 g/m2 of zinc coating, standard flux, 610 °C peak temperature, 5 °C/min heating rate and 4 min dwell time. The corrosion current density value of the confirmation experiment is in excellent agreement with the predicted value. The electrochemical characterization for selected samples gave indication that the brazing conditions had a more significant effect on the kinetics of the hydrogen evolution reaction than on the kinetics of the metal dissolution reaction.