Effects of surface roughness on the electrochemical properties and galvanic corrosion behavior of CFRP and SPCC alloy

Abstract

This study investigated the potentiodynamic corrosion behavior of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) and automotive rolled mild steel alloy (SPCC alloy) under different surface roughness conditions. Electrochemical characterization was performed using a potentiodynamic corrosion test with 5.0 wt. % NaCl aqueous solution at 25 ± 2 °C, while microstructural and compositional changes before and after corrosion were evaluated using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. The CFRP and SPCC corrosion rate increased as surface roughness increased. Generally, SPCC corroded faster than CFRP. The surface composition of CFRP was not affected by corrosion, regardless of the surface roughness conditions. Conversely, SPCC exhibited remarkable changes due to the formation of oxides, and its corrosion was more severe than that of CFRP as surface roughness increased. We used a double flat electrode cell to conduct a galvanic corrosion test in this study at 25 ± 2 °C. In this galvanic corrosion test, we studied different kinds of surface roughness for SPCC specimens under the CFRP material in its as-received condition and #200 condition. We confirmed that the results of galvanic corrosion for this study have a difference in corrosion amount and corrosion rate of SPCC specimens according to the surface roughness of CFRP.