Introducing * THE GREAT CANADIAN CORROSION EXPERIMENT *

I am pleased to present the newest installment on Corrosion of the Week..... The Great Canadian Corrosion Experiment!!!!
A little while back I received a comment on *Airplane Corrosion Of The Week* from Herge wondering just how long it would take for a piece of aircraft aluminum to corrode.
I gave some answer stating that corrosion only happens when conditions are right, there is an "accelerant" i.e. acidic substances like cola or urine, and the metal is no longer being protected by a corrosion resistant coating like Cladding, Alodine or paint. Shortly after that I got the bright idea that I would try and recreate a corrosion situation in a sort of "controlled experiment"..... And here we are today!

As you can see by this photo I have built a board with 9 pieces of a commonly used piece of 2024-T3 (copper additive for strength) Aluminum.
- The first row is 3 pieces of clad aluminum.... Cladding is a simple corrosion resistant technique using a thin layer of pure aluminum (because with no additive like copper or zinc, aluminum will actually take forever to corrode -i.e. pop cans are pure aluminum)
- The second row is 3 pieces with the clad scratched off, the most likely to corrode as the all protective coatings have been removed.....
- The third row has the aluminum with a hole drilled thru and a steel screw without a protective aluminum washer between it and the metal. This is to observe the effects of the "accelerant substances" as well as the effects of dissimilar metals called Galvanic Corrosion


- As you can see in the above photo I have introduced the 3 major corrosion causes that are commonly spilled in passenger aircraft:
- Cola
- Coffee
- Urine
The objective is to see how long it will take for each of these acidic substances will take to break down the aluminum pieces, and which one will actually corrode first....
I will be updating every week until we see any sign of metal decomposition!!!!!
Anyone care to take an educated guess which will show signs of corrosion first????