Study On The Corrosion Of Mild Steel And Anti-corrosion Tape Protection Technology In Splash Zone

The splash zone is the most corrosive area in the marine environment due toalternation of wetting and drying, seawater spray, sunshine, corrosive component inatmosphere, oxygen and steel material in itself. The materials exposed in splash zonewould suffer from serious corrosion and it was difficult to protect the materialsexposed in this region. If appropriate protection methods were applied, it wouldgreatly prolong the service lifetime of the whole steel structures exposed in this area.The corrosion law of deformed sample in splash zone was studied usingweight-loss method and electric connection experiment technology.Corrosion inhibitors, filler and adhesive grease were chosen and anti-corrosionpaste was produced. The material of inner and outer layer of anti-corrosive bandswere chosen through test and anti-corrosive bands were produced. The corrosion ofthe rods was assessed by weight-loss method and by examination of photographs.With the protection of anti-corrosive bands, the corrosion rate of steels exposed insimulated splash zone environment and splash zone was reduced2～3orders ofmagnitude. That is to say, using the anti-corrosive band could provide long termcorrosion protection for the steel structure exposed in splash zone.The method of using sacrificial anodes to protect mild steel is a conventional oneand has been extensively studied and widely used in marine structures. But,continuous electrolyte is necessary for a sacrificial anode to have protection effect.The splash zone has no stable electrolyte because it is perennially in a cycle ofwet-dry alternation condition. In this paper a method was fabricated that can retain astable supply of electrolyte (seawater) fixed in the splash zone and thus allows a sacrificial anode to function in the splash zone. The method of using sacrificial anodeto protect mild steel in the splash zone via retained electrolyte is valid.