Corrosion of NiTiDiscs in Different Seawater Environments

Abstract

This paper gives an approach to the corrosion resistance analysis and changes in the chemical composition of anNiTi alloy in the shape of a disc, depending on different real seawater environments. The NiTi discs were analysed after 6 months of exposure in real seawater environments: the atmosphere, a tidal zone, and seawater. The corrosion tests showed that the highest corrosion rate for the discs is in seawater because this had the highest value of current density, and the initial disc had the most negative potential. Measuring the chemical composition of the discs using inductively coupled plasma and X-ray fluorescence before the experiment and semiquantitative analysis after the experiment showed the chemical composition after 6 months of exposure. Furthermore, the applied principal component analysis and cluster analysis revealed the influence of the different environments on the changes in the chemical composition of the discs. Cluster analysis detected small differences between the similar corrosive influences of the analysed types of environments during the period of exposure. The obtained results confirm that PCA can detect subtle quantitative differences among the corrosive influences of the types of marine environments, although the examined corrosive influences are quite similar. The applied chemometric methods (CA and PCA) are, therefore, sensitive enough to register the existence of slight differences among corrosive environmental influences on the analysed NiTi SMA.