Image Deep Learning Assisted Prediction of Mechanical and Corrosion Behavior for Al-Zn-Mg Alloys

The use of metallographic images to predict the mechanical properties of materials and their corrosion behavior is helpful in achieving nondestructive detection and quality control. However, after a long-term attempt, the traditional methods cannot accurately correlate the mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of materials with the corresponding microstructure images. In this study, we propose a deep learning strategy to predict the mechanical property and corrosion behavior of large-scale extruded aluminum profiles using surface optical microstructure images. The proposed models with remarkable properties were established through experimental dataset collection, dataset preprocessing, deep learning network modification, and key parameter screening. Taking extruded Al-Zn-Mg alloys with different surface microstructures as example materials, 4,800 sets of “metallographic image – hardness (HV) – corrosion potential (Ecorr)” data were experimentally collected to establish the HV and Ecorr models with prediction accuracies of 90% and 82%, respectively. The proposed HV and Ecorr models exhibit great generalization ability with mean average errors of 1.8 HV and 7.0 mV on experimental validation sets, respectively. The proposed model can accurately correlate the metallographic images, mechanical property, and corrosion behavior, which can provide theoretical support for intelligent and nondestructive testing methods to further prevent unexpected material failure.