A Comprehensive Characterization of Environmental Severity Across 25 Sites in Nine Climactic Zones. Part 2: Corrosion Sensors

Understanding the risk of corrosion due to local environmental conditions is critical to aviation assets spread across the world. Oftentimes, maintenance intervals are set to the most conservative values assuming all sites are equal, resulting in significant and potentially excessive labor and material expenditures. While research efforts have been underway for the past 50+ years to assess environmental severity using witness coupons, recent advances in technologies have also provided users time-resolved monitoring equipment to monitor environmental conditions at the test site with minimal additional effort. To capitalize on these technologies and facilitate maintenance optimization, 25 locations across the world were analyzed to assess the severity of environmentally driven corrosion. A review was performed on how information collected from corrosion sensors can aid in location-specific corrosion risks assessments. An emphasis was placed on understanding the relationship between corrosion sensing elements and witness coupons. Lastly, in support of future corrosion modeling efforts, an evaluation of the relationships between open-source weather information and sensor data was executed to understand the risks and benefits when using corrosion sensors.