Corrosion behavior of a dynamically deformed Al–Mg alloy

The interplay between residual strain and corrosive medium can accelerate the material failure either by stress corrosion cracking or corrosion fatigue. Thus, in this work, the effect of deformation history on the electrochemical behavior of Al–Mg (AA5083) alloy in a 0.6 M NaCl solution was investigated. Initially, the Al5083 samples were deformed using forward Taylor anvil experiments and digital image correlation measurement was performed to characterize the accumulated plastic strain in the samples as well as the effect of higher defect density and fragmentation of coarse cathodic intermetallic particles. Potentiodynamic and cyclic polarization experiments were performed and results showed an increase in corrosion current density and a negative shift in protection potential in impacted samples. This is further confirmed using post corrosion microstructure, which showed a higher probability of trenching around fragmented cathodic particles near the impacted end. Hence, prior deformation history found to alter the electrochemical property to a large extent.