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Towards the Modeling of Microgalvanic Corrosion in Aluminum Alloys: the Choice of Boundary Conditions

N. Murer[1], N. Missert[2], and R. Bucchheit[1]

[1]Fontana Corrosion Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
[2]Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Published in 2008

Aluminum alloys in near-neutral, mildly aggressive solutions, undergo damage accumulation during corrosion, mostly due to the presence of micrometer-sized constituent intermetallic particles (IMP) that create a microstructural discontinuity at which localized corrosion occurs.

The Nernst-Planck equation with electroneutrality is used to simulate current and pH distributions resulting from microgalvanic coupling in COMSOL.

Assuming a control of the cathodic reaction by O2, diffusion has been shown to provide a simulated coupling current density distribution very similar to the experimental distribution measured on an array of Cu islands deposited on Al matrix.

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