Prediction of surf-zone and open-ocean airborne sea-salt spatial distribution via computational fluid dynamics and statistical method

ABSTRACT

The atmospheric corrosion of steel is a critical design and maintenance issue for structures such as electric transmission towers and bridges, which are generally widely dispersed. As airborne sea-salt particles are a major corrosion factor, the long-term cumulative spatial distributions of sea salt deposited on the structure surfaces are needed. In this study, we predict the long-term cumulative spatial distribution of sea-salt particles originating from the surf zone and from the open ocean, combining a computational fluid dynamics simulation and a statistical procedure. A new prediction method is introduced for sea-salt particle concentration originating from the surf zone and is validated based on comparisons with observed data. The predicted results indicate that surf-zone-originating particles increase remarkably the amount of airborne sea-salt particles near the coastline and can travel more than 5 km inland.

KEYWORDS:

• Atmospheric corrosion
• steel structure
• sea-salt particle
• numerical simulation
• statistical method

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Shikoku Electric Power Co. for providing observation data. The authors are grateful to Professor K. Fujii, Professor H. Nakamura (Hiroshima Univ.), and the electric power companies of Japan for their invaluable advice and fruitful discussion. The authors also thank Dr N. Tanaka (CRIEPI) for his significant contribution to the initial development of this method and Mr K. Kanzaki (DCC) for his assistance in performing the numerical simulation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.