Effect of moisture content and compaction on the corrosion of mild steel buried in clay soils

ABSTRACT

The corrosion of steels in clay soils is of interest for buried steel infrastructure. To obtain better information about the early corrosion effects, mild steel coupons were exposed for 3, 6 and 13 months in finely graded clay soil at different moisture contents and with different degrees of compression to simulate compaction. It was found that the maximum corrosion mass loss and pit depths occurred at a soil moisture content of 17–18 wt-% for all exposures and levels of compaction, corresponding to around 0.65 degree of saturation. These values are broadly consistent with earlier findings for non-clay soils. For exposures of 3 months corrosion was predominantly localised but subsequently became more uniform. This was shown to be consistent with good compaction of the soil against the steel surface. Poorly compacted lumpy clays, however, showed larger areas of localised corrosion and relatively greater corrosion mass loss and deeper pitting.

KEYWORDS:

• Steel
• soils
• clays
• mass loss
• pitting
• soil moisture

Acknowledgements

The work of undergraduate students Troy McCulloch and Tara Andrews on the second series of experiments is acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Robert B. Petersen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9548-3097

Robert E. Melchers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-4368

Additional information

Funding

The financial support provided by the Australian Research Council under grant DP1501356 and by Sydney Water Corporation is acknowledged.