Electrochemical corrosion and tribological evaluation of TiAl alloy for marine application

In order to evaluate the potential of the new light-weight structural TiAl alloy for marine application, the electrochemical corrosion and tribological behavior of TiAl alloy in a sea water environment have been investigated in this paper. A commercial Al 5083 marine product was selected as the control tests. The counterface materials include SiC, GCr15 steel and Hastelloy C276 alloy. TiAl alloy exhibits excellent corrosion resistance over Al 5083 alloy in sea water. The wear behavior of the two materials in sea water is sensitive to counterface materials. With GCr15 steel and C276 alloy as the mating surfaces, the wear resistance of TiAl alloy is significantly superior to that of Al 5083 alloy in sea water.