In-situ monitoring of pitting corrosion of AZ31 magnesium alloy by combining electrochemical noise and acoustic emission techniques

Abstract

Pitting corrosion of AZ31 magnesium (Mg) alloy was in-situ monitored by combining electrochemical noise (EN) and acoustic emission (AE) techniques. The EN signals were analyzed by transient shape observation, Hilbert spectrum and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) based on recurrence plot (RP). AE characteristic parameters including rise time, amplitude, absolute energy and peak count were adopted to classify the AE signals. According to the mutual information obtained by EN and AE measurements, three corrosion stages including film-forming process, pit initiation and pit propagation can be identified. The detailed relationship between the AE and EN parameters and different corrosion mechanisms is discussed. The main contribution of present study is to provide a feasible method to effectively monitor the self-corrosion process of Mg alloy.