Effect of applied potential on the tribocorrosion behaviors of Monel K500 alloy in artificial seawater

A systematic investigation has been carried out in the present work to study the electrochemical and tribocorrosion behaviors of Monel K500 alloy sliding against Al2O3 pin in artificial seawater. It can be observed that the cathodic shift of open circuit potential and two order of magnitude increase of current density formed due to sliding. The total tribocorrosion volume loss increases with increasing applied potential. Interestingly, the total material loss at applied potential of 0.5 V and 0.9 V is more than three times of that under pure mechanical wear, confirming the synergy between wear and corrosion. The contribution of wear-induced-corrosion (ΔKc) and corrosion-induced-wear (ΔKw) are dominant especially at high applied potential.