The Effects of Heat Treatment on the Electrochemical Properties and Corrosion of Aluminium Alloy AA8011 in an Aqueous Acid Media

Abstract

Effects of heat treatment and quenching regimen on the electrochemical corrosion behaviour of aluminium alloy AA8011 in 0.1M H2SO4 was studied by open circuit potential, potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements. Three different specimens (untreated/control, air -quenched oven- quenched) were investigated. Polarization results show that all the specimens underwent active dissolution, with no distinctive transition to passivation, heat treatment was observed to shift the corrosion potential towards low anodic values and decreased the rates of anodic partial reactions of the corrosion process. Electrochemical investigations reveal that heat treatment techniques have positive impacts on the alloy as indicated in increase in charge transfer resistance, polarization resistance and decrease in double layer capacitance. These positive effects are attributed to decrease in mean defect size and increase in lattice distortion of the crystallites in the heat treated specimens of the alloy. Studies of X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) morphologies of control, air and oven quenched samples of AA8011 aluminium alloy indicate decrease in mean defect size of 18.97% and 40.44%; increase in the lattice distortion of 11.07% and 20.04% for air and oven quenched specimens respectively.