A methodology to evaluate seawater corrosion on quasi-static tensile properties of a structural steel

Abstract

With the wind turbine industry growing and increasingly turning its focus to the offshore sector, it is important to grasp the challenges that come with it: the logistic challenges related to transport and maintenance, the exposure to wave and wind action and also the vulnerability to corrosion. The marine environment is a complex and aggressively corrosive environment. The S690 steel, as a structural steel of high mechanical strength, offers weight reduction advantages that are of interest to the sector. However, its behaviour in a corrosive medium is still not well known. As such, this work is part of an effort to characterize S690 steel under marine environment conditions. A methodology for inducing accelerated pre-corrosion on quasi-static tensile specimens of S690 steel, while simulating the environment, has been developed and applied. The effect of this pre-corrosion on the tensile mechanical properties is evaluated through testing in accordance with the ASTM E8 standard. It was found that the induced surface pre-corrosion, equivalent to six months of exposure, did not have a significant effect on the investigated mechanical behaviour.