Synergy of erosion and galvanic effects of dissimilar steel welding: Field failure analysis case study and laboratory test results

Welding austenitic stainless steels to carbon and low alloy steels are widely practiced in the process and construction industries. Their potential failures are underrated and underreported. In this research, erosion accelerated corrosion of a carbon steel-stainless steel galvanic couple was simulated to mimic the field failure analysis. The weight-loss of a metal during erosion–corrosion is caused by both galvanic corrosion component and erosion component. Furthermore, the results show that the percentage of corrosive weight-loss of the total weight-loss increases with the increasing cathode/anode area ratio, indicating the accelerating corrosion of carbon steel under the large cathode-small anode geometry.