Environmentally assisted cracking in advanced aerospace aluminums

Abstract

Aerospace alloys, often aluminums, are frequently exposed to corrosive environments resulting from naval service. These environments may produce significant changes in crack growth characteristics in these materials. An experiment was designed to characterize the effects of environment on crack growth rate and fracture mechanism for existing cracks in aluminum 7050-T7451 plate material. This data will be comparatively analyzed against aluminum 7075-T7631, an alloy with known susceptibility to corrosion, in order to determine the relative susceptibility of 7050-T7451, generally considered a superior aluminum alloy in terms of strength and corrosion resistance. The resulting data and subsequent analysis can in turn be used in more accurate determination of aircraft component service life in common corrosive environments experienced by aircraft in naval service.