Electrochemical approach to repassivation kinetics of Al alloys : gaining insight into environmentally assisted cracking

This work provides a broad overview of the systematic experimental studies conducted in our group to understand the factors governing the transition to a more occluded corrosion front during the repassivation of Al alloys, manifested by the appearance of an inflection during anodic polarization into the active region in NaCl solutions. The collected data and the derived empirical relationships enabled us to discern the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects controlling the transition to more occluded local damage. From the thermodynamic standpoint, the potential at the inflection, namely, the pit transition potential Eptp, can be considered as the thermodynamic driving force of Al dissolution in the acidified pit-like solution in contact with a freshly created surface. The associated current density iptp and the steepness of the potential decrease with current below Eptp are determined by interfacial electrochemical kinetics. More importantly, all these properties are influenced by electrochemical and metallurgical events, including residual stresses. These findings point to the electrochemical approach in combination with external mechanical load as a promising tool for investigating environmentally assisted cracking, in particular, crack nucleation and non-steady crack tip processes.