The development of anti-corrosive pigments for the most diverse coating Systems is extremely time consuming and expensive, owing to the necessary climatic testing, such as testing under salt spray exposure. To accelerate work on a new zinc-free pigment with improved protection, modern, electrochemical investigation methods have been used successfully and verified using traditional tests.
Development of anti-corrosive pigments for diverse coating systems is both time-consuming and costly, due to the necessary climatic testing, such as testing under salt spray exposure. To accelerate work on a new zinc-free pígment with improved protection, modern, electrochemical investigation methods have been used successfully and verified using traditional tests.
The main problem limiting the application of magnesium alloys as biodegradable implant material is its high degradation rate. In order to slow down the corrosion rate an extrusion process and specific coating systems based on plasma-chemical oxidation (PCO) and organic dip coating with poly(ʟ-lactid-co-caprolacton) (PLLC) were applied on Mg–1Ca magnesium alloy. The additional PLLC coating is used to delay the start of substrate corrosion, while the purpose of the PCO coating is to decrease the substrate corrosion rate. The corrosion behaviour was investigated in synthetic body fluid (SBF) through measurement of the hydrogen evolution rate in long term tests and polarisation and electrochemical noise measurements in short term tests. The results showed significant differences between the cast and extruded alloys and a decrease of the corrosion rate due to corrosion product formation. The combination of both coating systems resulted in a significant delay of metal substrate corrosion and all coating systems showed good correlation between short and long term tests. The combination of the three investigation methods provides the possibility to gain more information about the degradation behaviour and break down of protective coatings.
Sixteen laboratories have performed electrochemical noise (EN) measurements based on two systems. The first uses a series of dummy cells consisting of a 'star' arrangement of resistors in order to validate the EN measurement equipment and determine its baseline noise performance, while the second system, based on a previous round-robin in the literature, examines the corrosion of aluminium in three environments. All participants used the same measurement protocol and the data reporting and analysis were performed with automatic procedures to avoid errors. The measurement instruments used in the various laboratories include commercial general-purpose potentiostats and custom-built EN systems. The measurements on dummy cells have demonstrated that few systems are capable of achieving instrument noise levels comparable to the thermal noise of the resistors, because of its low level. However, it is of greater concern that some of the instruments exhibited significant artefacts in the measured data, mostly because of the absence of anti-aliasing filters in the equipment or because the way it is used. The measurements on the aluminium samples involve a much higher source noise level during pitting corrosion, and most (though not all) instruments were able to make reliable measurements. However, during passivation, the low level of noise could be measured by very few systems. The round-robin testing has clearly shown that improvements are necessary in the choice of EN measurement equipment and settings and in the way to validate EN data measured. The results emphasise the need to validate measurement systems by using dummy cells and the need to check systematically that the noise of the electrochemical cell to be measured is significantly higher than the instrument noise measured with dummy cells of similar impedance.
Bei der Qualitätsbewertung von Schneidwaren aus nichtrostenden martensitischen Chrom-Stählen stellt die Überprüfung der Korrosionsbeständigkeit ein wichtiges Kriterium dar. Allgemein üblich sind Wechseltauchversuche mit relativ hohem zeitlichem und auswertungsbedingtem Aufwand, die noch dazu zerstörend sind und teilweise fragwürdige Ergebnisse liefern. In den letzten Jahren wurden neue Ansatze der Prüfung geschaffen, die eine nahezu zerstörungsfreie Kurzzeit-Korrosionsprüfung erlauben. Es wird gezeigt, dass mit dem elektrochemischen Rauschen sehr empfindlich Einflüsse des Härtens und der Oberflächenbehandlung auf die Korrosionsbeständigkeit nachgewiesen werden können, wodurch eine schnelle und objektive Qualitätsbewertung innerhalb des Fertigungsprozesses und der Endkontrolle von Produkten möglich ist. Das für die Prüfmethodik ausgenutzte Phänomen des elektrochemischen Rauschens zielt darauf ab, den Beginn der Korrosion empfindlich und schnell zu detektieren, ohne die Prüfbedingungen maßlos zu verschärfen und Produkte damit zu zerstören. Neben der Funktionalität der Prüfung stehen aber auch die Anwenderfreundlichkeit und somit die Akzeptanz bei den Herstellern im Vordergrund. Aus diesem Grund wurde zusätzlich ein Indikatortest (KorroPad) als praxistaugliche Alternative zum elektrochemischen Rauschen angewendet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine gute Übereinstimmung beider Methoden und ermöglichen eine effektive betriebliche Qualitätsüberwachung von Schneidwaren.
Durch die Alkalität des Betons wird Betonstahl dauerhaft vor Korrosion geschützt. Infolge von Chlorideintrag kann dieser Schutz nicht länger aufrechterhalten werden und führt zu Lochkorrosion. Die zerstörungsfreie Prüfung von Stahlbetonproben mit 3D-CT bietet die Möglichkeit, eine Probe mehrfach gezielt vorzuschädigen und den Korrosionsfortschritt zu untersuchen. Zur Quanti-fizierung des Schädigungsgrades müssen die bei dieser Untersuchung anfallenden großen Bilddaten mit Bildverarbeitungsmethoden ausgewertet werden. Ein wesent-licher Schritt dabei ist die Segmentierung der Bilddaten, bei der zwischen Kor-rosionsprodukt (Rost), Betonstahl (BSt), Beton, Rissen, Poren und Umgebung unterschieden werden muss. Diese Segmentierung bildet die Grundlage für sta-tistische Untersuchungen des Schädigungsfortschritts. Hierbei sind die Änderung der BSt-Geometrie, die Zunahme von Korrosionsprodukten und deren Veränderung über die Zeit sowie ihrer räumlichen Verteilung in der Probe von Interesse. Auf-grund der Größe der CT-Bilddaten ist eine manuelle Segmentierung nicht durch-führbar, so dass automatische Verfahren unabdingbar sind. Dabei ist insbesondere die Segmentierung der Korrosionsprodukte in den Bilddaten ein schwieriges Problem. Allein aufgrund der Grauwerte ist eine Zuordnung nahezu unmöglich, denn die Grauwerte von Beton und Korrosionsprodukt unterscheiden sich kaum. Eine formbasierte Suche ist nicht offensichtlich, da die Korrosionsprodukte in Beton diffuse Formen haben.
Allerdings lässt sich Vorwissen über die Ausbreitung der Korrosionsprodukte nutzen. Sie bilden sich in räumlicher Nähe des BSt (in Bereichen vorheriger Volumenabnahme des BSt), entlang von Rissen sowie in Porenräumen, die direkt am BSt und in dessen Nahbereich liegen. Davon ausgehend wird vor der Korrosionsprodukterkennung zunächst eine BSt-Volumen-, Riss- und Porenerken-nung durchgeführt. Dieser in der Arbeit näher beschriebene Schritt erlaubt es, halb-automatisch Startpunkte (Seed Points) für die Korrosionsprodukterkennung zu finden. Weiterhin werden verschiedene in der Bildverarbeitung bekannte Algorithmen auf ihre Eignung untersucht werden.
An important possibility to improve the corrosion behaviour of magnesium alloys is the application of protective coatings. The quality of such coatings depends mainly on the pretreatment and the exposure conditions after pretreatment. Since magnesium surfaces change much faster under atmospheric conditions than those of almost any other technical material, it is necessary to pay special attention to this particular feature. The activity of acid-pickled surfaces of the magnesium alloys AZ31 and AZ91 in dependence on the exposure time and the humidity conditions was investigated with electrochemical noise (EN) measurements. In addition to pickling, plasma chemical vapour deposition processes open new possibilities for an economical, as well as ecologically quite safe, pretreatment. The results of EN investigations after acid pickling as well as specific plasma oxidation treatments of the two magnesium alloys after exposure to air with different humidities are presented.
Investigation on defect morphology and corrosion behaviour of TiMgN hard coatings on steel substrate
(2014)
Nitride hard coatings, such as Titanium nitride and chromium nitride coatings are widely used for applications focussing on wear protection and decorative purposes. Also these coatings are often applied on low alloyed steel substrates. The inevitable contact of the coated components with the environment through pores and coating defects bears the danger of corrosion of the steel substrate followed by further delamination of the coating and a loss of function of the component. A new attempt to increase the corrosion behaviour of those physically deposited hard coating systems is the implementation of magnesium. The positive effect of magnesium could be verified already electrochemically. Performed experiments on TiMgN have shown that corrosion resistance could drastically improved with increasing Mg content of the TiMgN up to 30 at% compared to steel substrates with applied titanium nitride hard coatings. Besides the clarification of the electrochemical and phenomenological effect of the magnesium on the corrosion behaviour, an additional aim of this work is the investigation of the coating defects, defect morphologies and their influence on the local corrosion behaviour. For this the incorporation of the magnesium and its effects on the coating material, the influence of coating growth related defects and the effect of the coating structure on the corrosion behaviour should be experimental examined by using innovative surface and material analysis methods such as FIB and TEM. Furthermore the evolution of the coating defects should be investigated by combing confocal microscopy with a new developed exposure test method using the electrochemical indication test KorroPad. The function of the KorroPad test, which was developed and patented [1] at the BAM for the detection of corrosion sensitive steel surfaces by indicating dissolution of iron ions [1], allows the detection and identification of critical coating defects for further microscopic investigation. Additional to that the KorroPad test simulates an accelerated exposure test by simultaneous absence of the disadvantages of typical short time exposure test like salt spray tests. Thus it allows a monitoring and analysis of the evolution of the critical coating defects and their influence on the local corrosion behaviour and the overall corrosion mechanisms. The results of this work should contribute to the development of new hard coatings with improved corrosion protection properties and also to a better understanding of the corrosion mechanisms of coated steel substrates.
The degradation behaviour of an Mg-1Ca alloy is investigated in vitro to figure out the possibilities of influencing the degradation behaviour of such an alloy by applying heat treatment as well as the use of a coating system based on plasma-chemical oxidation. It is shown that an optimised solution annealing (T4-heat treatment) can reduce the degradation rate while an additional ageing between 240 and 300 °C (T6-heat treatment) increases it. A coating generated by plasma-chemical oxidation reduces the degradation rate in the immersion test. Its effect is depending on the former heat treatment of the Mg-1Ca alloy as well as on the parameter during plasma-chemical oxidation.