On the Use of Boundary Element Method for Cathodic Protection System Modeling

Metallic installations placed in the soil or sea water ( such as metallic pipelines) are submissive to the processes of corrosion. Corrosion is the destruction of the metal which is placed in electrolytes. One of the most often used technique for protection of underground or underwater metallic infrastructures against corrosion is cathodic protection systems. Design of any cathodic protection system requires determination of the electric potential and current density distribution on the electrode surfaces. This paper presents numerical method based on the direct boundary element method for calculation of distribution of electric potential and current density on electrode surfaces with nonlinear polarization characteristics. Presented numerical method was used to calculate parameters of one illustrative example of cathodic protection system.