Corrosion Sensors LED In-Service Performance Assessment of Steel Pile Wrapping/Jacketing Systems on Marine Structures in Australia

The use of corrosion sensors for remote monitoring of infrastructure assets has become more frequent in recent years. Corrosion sensors utilizing the electrical resistance (ER) method have been developed, in which the resistance of a test sample is used to infer thickness change and hence corrosion rate. ER corrosion sensors have been deployed on various structures including marine wharves, bridges and coal processing facilities. On some marine wharf structures and some marine coastal bridges the performance of jacketed petrolatum-based tape wrapping systems on steel piles has been assessed including on steel piles suffering from accelerated low water corrosion (ALWC) and microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). The paper provides some relevant discussion of the corrosion and its mechanisms prevalent to marine wharf and bridge steel piles in Eastern Australia, Southern Australia and Western Australia as well as the pile wrapping/jacketing systems installed and being performance monitored in-situ. Details are provided of the corrosion sensors. An assessment of the results obtained to-date for up to 3 years of in-situ exposure has been made.