No abstract

Lithium-containing aluminum alloys are known to be attractive materials because of their low densities, high elastic modulus, high strengths and good corrosion resistance. Material degradation due to fatigue and corrosion are two major factors that contribute to the aging of an aircraft, and the prediction of corrosion and corrosion-fatigue are very important for the structural integrity of aircrafts. The presence of corrosion pits can significantly shorten the fatigue crack initiation life and decrease the threshold stress intensity of an alloy by as much as 50%. The purpose of this work was to compare mechanical, fatigue and electrochemical behavior of the new Al alloys, 2198 T851 and 7081 T73511 that are on the market, with those used by EMBRAER, named 2525 T3 and 7050 T7451. The comparisons also considered fatigue resistance in pre-corrosion confining in salt environment. Therefore, air and 15-day-confined 5% salt environment specimens were submitted to crack nucleation tests to obtain S-N curves. Potentiodynamic polarization curves were also plotted to study the electrochemical behavior of this alloys in a corrosion environment. Tensile and hardness tests were performed. The obtained results for the 2XXX series showed that these alloys are less susceptible to pitting corrosion due to more positives E pite compared to 7XXX series. However, their j corr values are also more positive, increasing the corrosion speed once it has begun. This happens due to the presence of some precipitates and a few elements that react in a way to increase the potential to higher values. Optical and electronic microscopy analyses were performed to determine the nature of precipitates of each alloy. The fatigue behavior of the salty-pre-confined environment specimens was much inferior compared to air test specimens according to each corrosion environment. Pits work as tension concentration, increasing fatigue crack nucleation. Air fatigue resistance of the new alloys was slightly inferior than the base alloys, but when the tests under preconfined environment were conducted, the four curves overlapped. This implies that the pit action governs crack nucleation mechanism, while in air, surface finishing is an additional factor.

Fatigue and corrosion-fatigue tests were performed to quantify the fatigue properties of AA2524-T3 and AA2198-T851 Al alloys. High cycle axial fatigue tests were carried out under air and salt-water fog conditions. In air, the specimens were fatigue tested at a frequency of 50 Hz, using specimens with and without preconditioning in a salt spray chamber, and for the corrosion fatigue condition, the tests took place at a frequency of 30 Hz in a salt-water fog condition. In all cases it was used a sinusoidal waveform and a stress ratio (R) of 0.1. The results indicate that the saline environment had a deleterious effect on the fatigue life of the two aluminum alloys. AA2524-T3 exhibited a better fatigue strength than AA2198-T851 when fatigue tested in air. However, considering the corrosion fatigue test in a saline fog environment an inverse behavior was observed with the AA2198-T851 exhibiting higher fatigue strength.