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Hot dip galvanizing is one of most important processing technique to protect metallic material against corrosion in many aggressive environments. In this work the effects of lead, tin and copper additions in the zinc bath are analyzed in terms of intermetallic damage due to bending tests, performed at three different angles. Morphologies of intermetallic cracks are characterized by means of light optical microscope observations and quantified by means of an image processing software analysis. Results were compared with the behavior of a zinc coating obtained by a pure zinc bath, to indentify differences between old optimized bath (with lead additions), actual optimized bath (with tin additions) and an innovative optimized bath (with copper additions).
KEYWORDS. Hot dip galvanizing; Damage; Bending.