Corrosion of metals exposed to 25% magnesium chloride solution and tensile stress: Field and laboratory studies

The use of chemicals for snow and ice control operations is a common practice for improving the safety and mobility of roadways in cold climate, but brings significant concerns over their risks including the corrosive effects on transportation infrastructure and motor vehicles. The vast majority of existing studies and methods to test the deicer corrosivity have been restricted to laboratory environments and unstressed metals, which may not reliably simulate actual service conditions. As such, we report a case study in which stainless steel SS 304 (unstressed and externally tensile stressed), aluminum (Al 1100) and low carbon steel (C1010) coupons were exposed to 25% MgCl2 under field conditions for six weeks. A new corrosion test-bed was developed in Montana to accelerate the field exposure to this deicer. To further investigate the observed effect of tensile stress on the corrosion of stainless steel, SS 304 (unstressed and externally stressed) coupons were exposed to 25% MgCl2 solution under the laboratory conditions. The C 1010 exhibited the highest percentage of rust area and suffered the most weight loss as a result of field exposure and MgCl2 sprays. In terms of ultimate tensile strength, the Al 1100 coupons saw the greatest reduction and the unstressed and externally stressed SS 304 coupons saw the least. The ability of MgCl2 to penetrate deep into the matrix of aluminum alloy poses great risk to such structural material. Tensile stressed SS 304 suffered more corrosion than unstressed SS 304 in both the field and laboratory conditions. Results from this case study may shed new light on the deicer corrosion issue and help develop improved field testing methods to evaluate the deicer corrosivity to metals in service.