Experimental investigation of typical environmental corrosion influence on fatigue life in 2024-T3 aluminium alloy

The influence of environmental corrosion on fatigue life of 2024-T3 aluminum alloy is investigated in this paper. Experiments with center-hole specimens and CC(T) specimens are conducted and reported. The test result shows that the corrosion influence is becoming serious while the environmental causticity is increasing, and the influence on crack initiation life is greater than that on crack propagation life. Analysis of the test data also indicates that the environmental causticity enlarges the dispersivity of fatigue life. Using the corrosion-modification-factor obtained by eigenvalue or mean value to prediction the fatigue life with high reliability will cause an unconservative conclusion.