The Effects of Heavy Metal Contamination on Magnesium Corrosion Performance

To aid in better assessing the corrosion performance of AZ91 die cast magnesium, standard salt spray corrosion tests have been made on both randomly selected commercial die castings and on three series of controlled purity test panels. The results reveal that the poor performance often associated with magnesium parts in salt spray are due principally to iron, nickel, and copper contamination levels. When these contaminants were limited, severe pitting corrosion was eliminated and the salt spray performance was good to excellent when compared to 380 aluminum and cold rolled steel.