Characterization of pitting corrosion of 7A60 aluminum alloy by EN and EIS techniques

The pitting corrosion behaviors of 7A60 aluminum alloy in the retrogression and re-aging (RRA) temper were investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and electrochemical noise (EN) techniques, and the microstructure and the second phase content of the alloy were observed and determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). The results show that there exist two different corrosion stages for 7A60 alloy in 3.5% NaCl solution, and the corrosion process can be detected by the appearance of EIS spectrum with two capacitive time constants and the wavelet fractal dimension D extracted from EN. SEM and EDS results also demonstrate that severe pitting corrosion in 7A60 alloy is mainly caused by electrochemical active MgZn2 particles, secondly by Al2MgCu and Mg2Si. Al7Cu2Fe particles make little contribution to the pitting corrosion of 7A60 alloy.