2015 W.R. Whitney Award Lecture: The Effects of Microstructure and Composition on Al Alloy Corrosion

The corrosion of Al alloys is rich in complexity because many different forms of corrosion can occur, the details of corrosion depend strongly on the alloy microstructure, and most Al alloys are heterogeneous with a microstructure that varies with thermomechanical processing. This paper reviews several studies on the corrosion behavior of Al alloys, focusing on how the composition and microstructure influence the forms and rates of corrosion, including pitting corrosion, intergranular corrosion, stress corrosion cracking, and surface layer attack. Thin film pitting, foil penetration, scanning Kelvin probe force microscopy, video imaging, and transmission electron microscopy are a few of the techniques that are described.