The study on corrosion resistance of high-strength spring steel

ABSTRACTThe corrosion resistance in medium carbon high-strength spring steel was investigated in neutral salt spray of 5% NaCl solution and potentiodynamic polarisation measurements. The results showed that the corrosion process in the salt spray environment could be divided into two stages. In the initial corrosion stage, the corrosion rates of tested steels were high and rapidly decreased with increasing corrosion time. At later stages where rust layers formed and the corrosion rates of the tested steels all tended to be stable, corrosion resistance was reinforced with the increase of alloying elements, which is just new finding about formation and evolution of corrosion products of spring steel to improve corrosion resistance further in this research. The observation of corrosion products of the tested steels by energy dispersive spectroscopy and electron probe micro-analysis indicated that both Cr and V which had an obvious synergy concentrated mainly in the inner region of the rust layers, and the co...