Application of hierarchical linear modelling to corrosion prediction in different atmospheric environments

ABSTRACT

Predicting the corrosion loss over time in different environments is challenging because the corrosion process develops over time and is influenced by multiple environmental factors simultaneously. Conventional regression analysis is not applicable because it has several limitations in dealing with multilevel structured data. In this paper, the hierarchical linear modelling method is employed instead. A two-level linear growth model is built to analyse the individual corrosion growth and the corrosion effects of the environment on carbon steel, zinc, and copper. Environmental factors that have important impact on the corrosion process are distinguished. By including the corrosion time and environmental factors as predictor variables, the model predictions are in good agreement with the experiments. The uncertainty of the corrosion data is quantitatively described and the confidence intervals are obtained. Then the long-term corrosion loss is predicted with power-linear corrosion kinetic model and corrosion-induced damage risks are analysed.

KEYWORDS:

• Hierarchical linear modelling
• corrosion prediction
• environmental variables
• damage risk

Acknowledgements

The authors thank S. W. Raudenbush, A. S. Bryk, and Scientific Software International for the development of the HLM methodology and the software packages.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Yikun Cai http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6522-4529

Yu Zhao http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4198-6251

Xiaobing Ma http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0913-9012

Kun Zhou http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9625-3963

Hao Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1088-1123

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No: 61473014) and the Academic Excellence Foundation of BUAA for PhD Students.