Techniques for the examination of corrosion products

The examination of products of aqueous and non aqueous corrosion is carried out to obtain information about one of a combination of aspects such as composition, hardness, stress level, adhesion to basis metal and other mechanical properties (figure 1). A number of techniques are avialable to investigate corrosion products and some of these techniques have found greater application with products of aqueous corrosion and some with products of gaseous corrosion. This paper presents the technqiues available for obtaining information about the various aspects mentioned above and discusses the main characteristics, nature of data obtainable, advantages and limitations of some of the less know techniques.