Bronze Corrosion And Burial Environment Relationship, A Preliminary Study

This paper is about a series of experiments on various porportioning bronze alloys which were buried in different soil conditions. The author makes an companon among the corrision speed, and then analyzes the process of bronze alloys samples corrision which were influenced both by alloy's ingredient and the four corrosion elements in soil: ion concentration, pH, percent air -pore space, and moisture content. We draw some conclusions from experiments. Bronze alloys of various proportioning have different anticorrosion capabilities. Among three bronze alloys, corrosion resistance of the bronze with high amount of tin is the highest, the bronze with high amount of lead is the lowest. We also find that corrosion product of three porportioning bronze alloys samples obviously have various appearance.The four corrosion elements of soil affect differently on alloy samples corrosion rate and present some certain regularities. Among them, ion concentration and pH are mainly influential factors on alloys which are corroded in soil, and percent air -pore space, and moisture content also have influence, but not so obvious as other two elements. Furthermore, these bronze samples buried in soil contained four corrosion elements have different appearance characters.It can help us understand the internal factors of corrosion of various bronzes in the different soil environment from the data of this experiment. We also can provide some theoretical bases for protecting bronze vessels, which were just excavated from each area.