Tribocorrosion performance of Zn, Zn-Ni with magnesium electrodeposited on medium carbon steel in a chloride environment

The damage of materials due to both wear and corrosion has a significant impact on engineering systems. Therefore, the industry has recently been more focused on the life cycle costs of the systems and has sought to improve reliability. The reliability and efficiency of machines and equipment depend on tribocomponents operating in a chloride environment. Crucial components are subjected to a wide range of devastating tribocorrosion effects, and in many operations combined with mechanical loadings. A number of protection systems to mitigate corrosion in the marine environment have been employed to counter these problems. One of them are electrodeposited coatings such as Zn and Zn-Ni which were documented in numerous research. Much of it has been conducted in areas of corrosion behavior, mechanical properties, and tribology. In order to enhance the corrosion resistance of zinc film, various metals have been implemented. One of them is magnesium. The influence of Mg content in the alloy on the corrosion resistance has been noted by many researchers. However, one cannot find recent scientific publications and papers presenting tribocorrosion performance of Zn-Ni-Mg alloy coatings. Therefore, tribocorrosion behavior of Zn-Ni alloy coating with magnesium was investigated. The main aim of this study is to investigate tribocorrosion performance of Zn, and Zn-Ni-Mg alloys coatings with a possibility to replace Zn coating in engineering systems. All coatings were provided on AISI 1045 medium carbon steel with trivalent chrome passivation. The study was carried out in a ball-on-plate combination in 3.5% solution of NaCl. A triple electrode system with a precision four-channel ATLAS 9833 potentiostat was used for monitoring the electrochemical phenomena. The reference electrode was a calomel electrode, SCE. Polarization curves for all samples in 3.5% NaCl were utilized. The evaluation of the surface wear of all samples with coatings was done. The measure of the wear was the depth of the wear trace which was defined on the basis of profilometric measurements. The value of hardness of coatings was identified.