Corrosion Diagnosis of a Ship Mock-Up From Near Electric-Field Measurements

We present here an original application linking an electrochemical phenomenon and the computational aspect of electromagnetic fields to provide a corrosion diagnosis of a protected underwater steel structure. This is done with the pairing of a boundary element method and the resolution of an inverse problem. After a defined operating time, it is mandatory to check an underwater steel structure. Sadly, current examinations techniques require immobilizing the structure for a long time and are less efficient. The purpose of this paper is to replace this checking by a series of close electrical measurements in the conducting water which provides a corrosion diagnosis of the structure. The new method introduced ensures great time-savings but also an accuracy never reached before. This paper presents this numerical method and its checking through real electrical measurements on a frigate mock-up.