PIT: Monitor and forecast pitting corrosion in maritime steel structures
Context
While pitting corrosion is widely seen as the culprit of compromising offshore structure lifespans, uncertainty around its underlying mechanisms leaves significant gaps in currently used predictive models. Industry standards presently only indirectly include pitting corrosion by relying on S-N curves for free corrosion, as basic questions remain unanswered regarding steel corrosion types (is it pitting of heterogeneous uniform corrosion), pit initiation conditions, pit growth kinetics, and overall fatigue impact of pitting corrosion. Furthermore, the offshore sector currently lacks reliable in-situ monitoring technologies to track pit formation and progression in real time.
Research objectives
The main research tracks include:
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Investigating the use of several electrochemical techniques for the continuous monitoring of pitting corrosion
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Method development of automated, user-independent pitting characterization of corrosion coupons
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The influence of macrofouling on pitting corrosion, using field-exposed coupons analysed with the automated pitting characterization developed in 2)
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Providing data for implementation in existing corrosion fatigue models for lifetime prediction
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