This chapter describes the factors that affect the corrosion performance of aluminum assemblies joined by methods such as welding, brazing, soldering, and adhesive bonding. The factors covered include galvanic effects, crevices, and assembly stresses in products susceptible to stress-corrosion cracking.

Weldments made by the various welding processes may contain discontinuities that are characteristic of that process. This chapter discusses the different welding processes as well as the discontinuities typical of each process. It provides a detailed discussion on the methods of nondestructive inspection of weldments including visual inspection, liquid penetrant inspection, magnetic particle inspection, radiographic inspection, ultrasonic inspection, leak testing, and eddy current and electric current perturbation inspection. The chapter also describes the properties of brazing filler metals and the types of flaws exhibited by brazed joints.

This chapter considers the role of materials in brazing operations and the manner in which they impact on the choice of processing conditions and their optimization. The concepts covered are metallurgical and mechanical constraints, and constraints imposed by the components and their solutions as well as service environment considerations.