Design & Characterization of resistance-based corrosion under-insulation sensor

Corrosion under insulation or composite wrappings has become a major concern in aging petrochemical plants. It can produce unseen pits and cracks that could lead to catastrophic failures with hours of downtime and millions of ringgits in losses. There are available sensors designed to detect this type of corrosion, however, it cannot give the actual metal loss as required by the engineers. In this work, a resistance-based corrosion sensor is proposed for this purpose. The sensor is going to be designed and developed from iron (Fe) compound thin films. This sensor is going to be integrated into a wireless system consisting of a transponder and integration. The sensor design requirement is to have a resistance of 200 Ω to 2000 Ω. The shape and features may vary depending on the requirement of the transponder. The sensor is fabricated using thermal evaporator and PCB technology with the calculated dimension of connector and finger, the resistance obtained is 1863.69 Ω