A Practical Approach to Corrosion Modelling for Structural Analysis

The traditional approach to corrosion modelling is relatively straightforward. Corrosion is expressed as a rate of penetration per year and failure is defined when a critical loss of section is predicted to have occurred. If this approach is applied to civil structures then it generally proves to be overly conservative and does not reflect the actual properties of a structure.

This paper describes the development of an alternative approach that takes into account the overall variability in the environment and exposure conditions during the corrosion process. This generates a basic data set that can be employed to represent the natural variability in extent and severity of corrosion occurring on a structure. This was collated into cumulative frequency curves for several common metallic systems and a Weibull distribution fitted to the data. The model has been verified against several different types of structures.