Investigation of the corrosion behaviour of TiC/Ti6Al4V manufactured through laser additive manufacturing

¹ Photonic Center, Manufacturing Cluster, CSIR, South Africa
² Department of Chemistry, University of Limpopo, South Africa
³ Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Technology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
⁴ Department of Material Science and Metallurgical Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa
⁵ Department of Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

^* Hosia Kgomo: Hkgomo@csir.co.za

Abstract

This research study focuses on investigating of the corrosion response of TiC/Ti6Al4V composite manufactured by laser additive manufacturing. Corrosion tests for TiC/Ti6Al4V were carried out with 3.5% of NaCl solution at room temperature 25ºC (remaining constant) and varying the time. Corrosion test results were used to obtain the Tafel plot graph, which determined the corrosion potential and current density of TiC/Ti6Al4V. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to analyse the microstructure of the material and X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used for phase analysis of the material. Comparison studies were done on the corrosion behaviour of TiC/Ti6Al4V and Ti6Al4V. TiC/Ti6Al4V showed better corrosion resistance than Ti6Al4V