Abstract

Navy ships rely on a combination of coatings and cathodic protection (CP) systems to protect steel tanks and enclosures. Corrosion of tanks and enclosures was named the top corrosion expense on Navy vessels, and recently accounted for $250 million in annual direct costs.1 Presently, a coating health monitoring technology that relies on electrochemical sensors and stochastic models is being developed to quantify the location and extent of coating damage, while providing a real-time assessment of CP system performance. This technology is based on an ultra-low power, low cost smart sensor platform designed for structural health and equipment monitoring and diagnostics. The coating condition monitoring system is composed of a network of sensor nodes that measure environmental conditions and electrochemical parameters to provide an evaluation of the health of coating, substrate, and cathodic protection systems. Previous results demonstrated the successful performance of this system on two-dimensional steel plates, and this work extends the development into three dimensional structures representative of ballast water tanks. The results of laboratory testing of a prototype system under development for shipboard applications will be presented.

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