Corrosion of steel in seawater - A poorly formulated but important practical problem

Mild and low alloy steels are used extensively for off-shore structures and for ship construction as well as for sheet piling and harbour-side facilities. Despite more than 60 years of effort, and some quite extensive, long term experimental test programs, the precise understanding of the mechanics of the marine corrosion of these steels and the influences of the various factors which are now known to be important has been slow to develop and, in the context of mathematical formulation, have been neglected by material scientists/engineers. The various factors of importance in marine corrosion and the models which have been proposed to describe time-dependent material loss as a function of time are reviewed.