ABSTRACT

Characterizing the risk of corrosion due to environmental severity is critical for a variety of disciplines. However, a survey of the literature shows that there are multiple techniques and materials being used to assess environmental severity, making it difficult to compare results from different sources. To highlight this, groups from the Naval Research Lab and Naval Air Warfare Center – Aircraft Division co-deployed program-unique assessment techniques to address project-specific needs. During the post-exposure data analysis, the two teams combined the data sets in order to understand how different alloys perform in the same environments. This study will evaluate how alloy choices, along with techniques for characterizing atmospheric chemistry and real-time monitoring, can influence corrosion severity assessments. This work will also be used to aid in the development of the new standards in work through the AMPP SC-07 working committee.

INTRODUCTION

Evaluating the location-based risk of corrosion is critical to a number of fields of industry. Within naval aviation, knowing the risk of corrosion from environmental factors can be used to ensure that maintenance intervals are properly planned. From a basic research aspect, understanding how different sites behave allows researchers to better correlate how performance at a standard test site can be extrapolated in future research efforts. However, a survey of literature and conversations with many corrosion experts has shown variability in how environmental factors are assessed.1-4 Features such as alloy selection, coupon dimension, atmospheric chemistry and the relatively new field of corrosion sensors are but a few of the decisions that a researcher must make when designing an evaluation matrix.

Research groups at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Naval Air Warfare Center-Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) were funded by different sponsors to assess environmental severity at certain naval air stations. The teams collaborated to ensure that both methods of environmental severity assessment were co-located and installed at the same time. The results of the individual studies will be discussed in separate publications. The opportunity here is to understand how different methods perform comparatively and assess which options provide the most efficient tools for monitoring the risks of environmentally-driven corrosion.

This content is only available via PDF.
You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.