Electro-mechanical interactions during erosion–corrosion

This study aims to understand the physical processes invoked when solid particle erosion occurs in a corrosive media. The literature on wear-corrosion shows some effort has been placed in qualifying the interactions between erosion and corrosion leading to ‘synergistic’, ‘additive’ and ‘antagonistic’ terms. These terms are difficult to quantify experimentally with multiple experiments being required and generate considerable errors often suggesting these interactive terms are negligible. Hence the current work seeks to investigate these interactions, the errors associated with their measurement and gain understanding of the processes involved by careful examination of microstructural and mechanical property changes of surfaces subjected to erosion–corrosion. Cast nickel–aluminium bronze/NaCl solution has been chosen to study as this system has been studied at Southampton for several years. In situ electrochemical, gravimetric and topographical analyses have been evaluated and discussed using microstructural and hardness measurements.