Smart Cathodic Protection System for Real-Time Quantitative Assessment of Corrosion of Sacrificial Anode Based on Electro-Mechanical Impedance (EMI)

Corrosion of metal structures is often prevented using cathodic protection systems, that employ sacrificial anodes that corrode more preferentially relative to the metal to be protected. In-situ monitoring of these sacrificial anodes during early stages of their useful life could offer several insights into deterioration of the material surrounding the infrastructure as well as serve as early warning indicator for preventive maintenance of critical infrastructure. In this article, we present an Electro-Mechanical Impedance (EMI) measurement-based technique to quantify extent of corrosion of a zinc sacrificial anode without manual intervention. The detection apparatus consists of a lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducer affixed onto a circular zinc disc, with waterproofing epoxy protecting the transducer element when the assembly is submerged in liquid electrolyte (salt solution) for accelerated corrosion by means of impressed current. We develop an analytical model for discerning the extent of corrosion by monitoring shift in resonance frequency for in-plane radial expansion mode of the disc. The model presented here accurately captures the nonlinearity introduced by partial delamination of the corrosion product (zinc oxide) from the disc, and shows excellent agreement with experimental results. Our work establishes the efficacy of the proposed technique for monitoring the state of health of sacrificial anodes in their early stage of deterioration and could thus be widely adopted for structural health monitoring applications within the internet of things.