Corrosion test and corrosion fatigue numerical simulation research on marine structures

The corrosion tests on Q235B steel in artificial seawater with conventional room temperature and high-temperature & high-humidity are first conducted. The test results show that increasing the acidity and temperature of the corrosion solution, as well as adopting the alternating dry-wet, can significantly enhance the corrosion rate of materials. In addition, the corrosion tests exhibit good simulation and acceleration characteristics compared to at sea tests. Then, the corrosion and corrosion-fatigue numerical simulation methods based on COMSOL and MATLAB are proposed. Meanwhile, the corrosion of Q235B steel in neutral artificial seawater and corrosion fatigue damage of a T-shaped structure under the coupling of artificial seawater with fatigue load are simulated and analyzed. The corrosion simulation results indicate that when the temperature is 40 °C and 20 °C, the average corrosion rates of specimens increase by 96.61% and 15.25%, respectively. Furthermore, when the temperature is 20 °C, the average corrosion rates obtained from numerical simulation and corrosion test are 0.068 mm/a and 0.062 mm/a, respectively, with a relative error of 9.7%, verifying the validity of the corrosion numerical simulation method. Based on the corrosion fatigue simulation, it is found that the maximum corrosion thickness increases by about 23% compared to pure corrosion condition in the weld region, and the structural fatigue damage increases by about 21.36% compared to pure fatigue condition after 10 years of corrosion.