Corrosion is one of the most damaging mechanisms in aluminum alloys commonly used in aerospace engineering structures. Cracks usually initiate from the pits/defects, and currently, there are no measurement probes that can estimate the stress environment around corrosion pits. In this article, a systematic study is conducted to investigate the evolution of corrosion-damage-induced stresses in aluminum alloy 2024-T3 as a function of time. Corrosion experiments were conducted on a metal sample under controlled electrochemical conditions and the surfaces were imaged using AFM techniques. A computational procedure was developed to investigate the stresses resulting from corrosion damage/pits using the AFM image, CAD, and finite element analysis. Analysis was also carried out on corroded specimens under bending and tension loadings in order to see how the loading affects the induced stresses. The results indicated that the stress distribution and levels on the corroded surface varied due to irregularities and randomness in the metal sample. The results also indicated that the stress initially increases and reaches a plateau with increasing corrosion time and may be responsible for failure (crack initiation) of the metals.
展开▼
