For corrosion resistant materials exposed to low-temperature atmospheric environments, the corrosion mode of highest risk is expected to be localized corrosion (pitting, crevice, stress-corrosion cracking) due to accumulation of aggressive species within thin solution layers and/or formation of occluded local geometries. The stability of such a localized corrosion site requires that the corroding site (anode) must dissolve at a sufficient high rate to maintain the critical chemistry, and a robust cathodic area (cathode) must exist that can provide sufficient cathodic current. The characteristics of both the anode and the cathode depend on a large number of physiochemical variables (e.g., temperature, ionic concentration, water layer thickness, etc) and electrochemical parameters (i.e., cathodic and anodic polarization behavior). The effects of all these parameters add significantly to the dimensionality of the problem and a systematic study of these parameters is thus more tractable computationally than experimentally. The objective of this study was to computationally characterize the stability of such a local corrosion site and explore the effects of physiochemical and electrochemical parameters on that stability. The overall goal is to contribute to the establishment of a scientific basis for the prediction of the stabilization of localized attack on wetted, corrosion resistant material surface. A localized corrosion site, illustrated in Figure 1, consists of two parts: (a) the external wetted surface (cathode) and (b) the crevice (anode). This study computationally separated the two and modeled them individually, linking them through the imposition of a common fixed potential at the junction point (i.e., the mouth of the crevice). An objected-oriented computational code, CREVICER, developed at UVa, was extended to study separately both the wet surface (cathode) and the crevice (anode). SS316L was chosen as the material of interest.
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