Corrosion Behavior of Unprotected Weldments in Marine Environments

In the absence of protective measures such as paint or cathodic protection systems, steel weldments, immersed in seawater, are expected to corrode freely. This is particularly true for the ice breakers serving the Canadian Coast Guard, where, in the course of operations, paint is scoured from the vessel hulls and cathodic protection systems were not installed. However, the weldments do not corrode uniformly. In some cases, the weld itself corrodes rapidly and requires regular replacement. At the other extreme, the heat-affected zones (HAZ) corrode instead—a potential safety and integrity concern. The morphology of ice breaker weldment corrosion has altered over the last few decades and this has been attributed to changes in welding consumables and processes. The current study is an investigation into the corrosion characteristics of weldments with a particular focus on the compositional differences between weld metal and hull plate steels. A method has been developed for numerically describing the corrosion of weldment regions (plate steel, HAZ, weld cap passes, and weld re-heated zones) arising from an accelerated corrosion test. This in turn enabled the development of an equation that predicts weldment corrosion performance based entirely on material composition. This permits selection of welding consumables that are anticipated to give good corrosion performance, avoiding the extremes of rapid weld metal corrosion and preferential HAZ attack.