Ballast Tank Corrosion using Naval Ship Operational Profiles

The sustainability of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) ships is affected by structural deterioration, including corrosion, which results in material loss through the oxidation of exposed steel. Deterioration through corrosion is one of the determining factors in developing the operational planning and economic aspects of structural maintenance management. The extent of corrosion depends on many environmental parameters making it difficult to predict efficient repair strategies using periodical time based maintenance. With this consideration, and the fact that the RAN owns an increasingly ageing fleet, new and innovative ways are required to effectively manage a ship. Presently there is no simulation tool available to the RAN that allows ship corrosion to be predicted. Tools such as these have been developed empirically for some commercial ships, however the corrosion loss models exhibit a high variability. By taking into consideration the operational parameters of the vessel a greater accuracy in modelling corrosion can be achieved.