Caracterização das camadas formadas no processo de galvanização à quente sobre uma chapa de aço livre intersticiais

Abstract

The automobile industry, when seeking to increase warranty against corrosions, employs galvanized IF (intersticial free) steels to the body shell, since these meet the superficial, compliance, weldability and other quality criteria. In this context, the corrosion resistance of an IF steel with galvanic coating (GI) and different weights (85 g/m2 (Z85), 100 g/m2 (Z100), 120 g/m2 (Z120), 144 g/m2 (Z144) and 180 g/m2 (Z180), phosphated and with cataphoresis, were evaluated through an accelerated cyclical corrosion experiment. The result of this experiment showed that even with the variation of the galvanic coating (GI) the result of the corrosion resistance was the same, leading to the hypothesis that the intermetallic layer which is present in all samples, regardless of the weight, must influence corrosion resistance. Thus, supplementary experiments were done to comprehend the effect of the zinc layer and the intermetallic layer in corrosion resistance. The characterization of the layers formed in the GI galvanizing process was done in the Z100 (100g/m²) sample. This sample was chosen because it is the most used in the automobile industry and it did not suffer any previous treatment since the objective was to analyze only the layers of galvanized GI. The experiments done were in the microstructure (XRD, MEV and EDS) and electrochemical experiment (potenciodinamic polarization). We concluded that the intermetallic layer is formed by phases Fe2Al5 and FeAl3, with predominance of phase Fe2Al5. It was verified through the electrochemical dissolution experiment that the intermetallic corrosion resistance is at minimum 7 times greater than of the zinc, further on this result, the potentiodynamic polarization experiment shows that the passive intermetallic layer slows the oxidation velocity, which means, the galvanic coating (GI) corrosion resistance is increased.