CORROSION RISK

Corrosion is a primary reason for the deterioration of a vessel's integrity and critical vessel systems, decreasing their availability, reliability, and safety.
Corrosion is the enemy of materials engineers, boat and vessel builders, and vessel owners alike.
Corrosion has also become a global problem with serious economic, health, safety, and technological consequences worldwide.

Prolonged contact with seawater will corrode, degrade, and decay almost any substance including fibreglass, wood, or metal.
Corrosive elements from seawater can seep into vital mechanical parts and electrical wiring.
Over time corrosion from seawater will ultimately jeopardize the safety of a vessel. In extreme cases, if corrosion is left unmonitored, it can lead to an asset's integrity failure, posing safety risks to personnel, equipment costs, and subsequent environmental damage.

TYPICAL CHALLENGES

The best defense against marine corrosion is proper care and maintenance.
Corrosion tests are often conducted by visual inspection, which estimates service life, determines corrosion levels, analyzes potential causes of accidents, and verifies anticorrosion performance.
However, corrosion is difficult to measure, because it can occur in difficult-to-reach places of vessels and on both sides of the hull.

While inspections focus on the entire asset and generally happen every 3-5 years (depending on the vessel’s type and size), monitoring observes and checks the progress on a specific area of the vessel. It includes regular data collection to track changes in corrosion in the area being monitored.
If corrosion increases rapidly, quarterly monitoring might be changed to monthly monitoring to track the corrosion more carefully.
Conventional corrosion inspection and monitoring are expensive and time-consuming. It often involves drydocking the vessel. When corrosion reaches critical levels – it becomes more costly to repair.
Regular monitoring is imperative to reduce the time the vessel spends in a drydock and decrease maintenance costs.