On quantitative corrosion rate monitoring with ultrasound

Wall-thickness loss rate (WTLR) is an important parameter that defines a corrosion process. The speed at which a WTLR can be determined is directly related to how quickly one can intervene in a process that is heading in the wrong direction. Ultrasonic testing has been widely used as a convenient and efficient technique for online corrosion monitoring. One of the key performance parameters of ultrasonic corrosion monitoring is detection speed. While WTLRs can be determined by fitting linear lines to wall-thickness loss (WTL) measurements, the presence of noise in the measurements makes it difficult to judge the confidence levels of the slopes that are calculated this way. In this paper, a statistics based approach for assessing the detection speeds that are achievable by ultrasonic corrosion monitoring systems is presented. Through the statistical analysis of experimental data, a state-of-the-art laboratory setup is shown to be able to detect both WTLRs and changes in WTLR that are of interest to industry (i.e. 0.1-0.2 mm/year) within 1-2 h.