Part I: Development of a Markov Description of Pitting Corrosion

In this, the first part of a two-part series, a new Markov stochastic process is developed for the description of the growth with time of maximum pit depths in pitting corrosion systems. The Markov model is fully operational with the determination of two parameters, λ and κ, that constitute the corrosion system parameters. Also described is an experiment that was undertaken to determine these characteristics for a specific pitting corrosion system. With their determination, the stochastic model predicts the future time evolution of the probability distribution describing the maximum pit depths. In this way, a new method of describing pitting corrosion, in general, is established.