Factors affecting the amount of corroded iron converted into adherent rust in steels submitted to immersion tests

It is usually assumed that α*, the amount of iron that is converted into adherent rust (AR), in steels exposed to immersion corrosion is a constant independent of time, pollutant concentration, and steel composition. In order to investigate these ideas, we have performed total immersion tests with varying chloride concentration and immersion time in carbon (CS) and weathering steels (WS). The corrosion products were weighted and characterized by XRD, and FT-IR, Raman and Mössbauer spectroscopies. We found that α* ranged between 0.30 and 0.72 for CS and between 0.20 and 0.60 for WS.