CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY STUDY AND CORROSION PROCESS - THE AL-(HF,HNO3,HCL) SYSTEM

Classical electro-chemical measurements do not give quantitative infor mation on the morphology of corrosion process. In this paper, a comple mentary way to study the corrosion process using a confocal microscope and image analysis is proposed. By this way, the corrosion of alumini um by a mixture of acids was studied. To perform this analysis, morpho logical tools dedicated to grey tone images were used. The corrosion p rocess was studied by several roughness and topological parameters. Th eir evolutions during corrosion process show that two opposite phenome na must be taken into account in this corrosion process: the minimisat ion of the energy and the dependence of the corrosion rate with the he terogeneities of the material (grains boundaries, dislocations network s, ...).