Alternative corrosion protection pretreatments for aluminum alloys

Aluminum alloys are extensively used in space programs for both structural and nonstructural applications. As is well known, the corrosion resistance of these alloys is quite limited and anticorrosion treatment is needed. Currently, the treatment most often used for improving the corrosion resistance of aluminum alloys is chromate (CrVI-based) conversion coatings (CCC). Due to the high environmental impact of these compounds, the REACH Regulation of the European Union decided to limit/restrict the use of hexavalent chromium. A sunset date of mid-2017 has been already set. For the time being, many chromate-free alternative products are available, but they have been found to be significantly inferior in terms of corrosion protection performances with respect to the chromate options. In this regard, there is a great need to develop high-performance hexavalent chromium-free anticorrosion coatings with low environmental impact and conformity with the EU regulations. The European Space Agency (ESA) is currently involved in a frame contract with Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (ISQ) that is currently ongoing. The objective of this study is to evaluate the anticorrosion behavior of the different alternative pretreatments applied to the most used aluminum alloys. The outcome of this activity will be the identification and the optimization of the most promising anticorrosion pretreatment. Several commercial Cr(VI)-free processes were applied onto aluminum alloys (2024-T3 and 2024-T81) used in the construction of ESA spacecraft in order to investigate their anticorrosive properties compared with Alodine 1200, a widely used conventional CCC. One of these commercial processes presented good anticorrosion performance, even better than Alodine 1200, and these results are presented in this paper. Salt spray resistance is included in the testing program as well as metallurgical coating evaluations that include microscopy observations before and after testing and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy in order to evaluate surface and microstructural modifications due to degradation mechanisms. Further studies must be performed with this promising alternative, modifying application parameters in order to achieve improved corrosion protection efficiency.