Investigation of the stress corrosion cracking behavior in annealed 5083 aluminum alloy sheets with different texture types

Al–Mg alloys are commonly employed for anti-corrosion parts in marine and rail vehicles. However, the corrosion resistance of these alloys is affected by the alloy microstructure. In this study, 5083 aluminum alloy sheets with different recrystallized textures (a low-intensity texture, a cube-based texture, and a brass-based texture) were obtained by cold rolling and annealing. The stress corrosion cracking and short crack propagation behavior were investigated based on the microstructural characterization, intergranular corrosion, electrochemical corrosion, and slow strain rate testing. The results showed that the tested samples exhibited large differences in stress corrosion properties, although they had a similar resistance to intergranular corrosion. The sample dominated by the brass texture exhibited the best resistance to stress corrosion cracking (SCC) with an ISSRT of 11.7%, while the sample with the low-intensity texture exhibited the worst resistance to SCC with an ISSRT of 29.7%. Moreover, the stress corrosion crack in the sample dominated by the brass texture propagated along a more tortuous path. The crack was deflected at brass texture grains, which was attributed to the combined effects of the relatively large twist angle between the grain boundaries of brass grains and neighboring grains and the low grain boundary energy configuration of {011} orientation grains.