2008 F.N. Speller Award Lecture: Developing and Applying Technologies—Practical Corrosion Prediction

Corrosion prediction technology has advanced significantly over the past 30 years. Making practical use of these advances for routine, rapid corrosion prediction in industrial environments has been and continues to be a challenge. This paper examines several of the advances over this period from the standpoint of how they can be used to make field predictions. The techniques discussed are theoretical potential-pH diagrams, the rotating cylinder electrode, and artificial neural networks. In addition, the internet now enables web-interfaced “intelligent” corrosion tools to be widely accessible. Use of this information medium could enable the corrosion practitioner to capture the “collective corrosion experience” of many for corrosion prediction. This potential is discussed from the standpoint of several corrosion prediction applications that have been made internet-accessible.