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Applications - Cathodic Protection Designer

This application allows users to model cathodic protection systems for corrosion prevention in 3D geometries imported from CAD files. Users can apply boundary conditions like current densities and simulate initial, mean, and final states of protection. Output reports can be generated in common file formats. The example geometry demonstrates protection of a monopile wind turbine foundation using sacrificial anodes. Key factors like material properties, mesh resolution, and numerical solvers can be configured to study cathodic protection design scenarios.

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Mr ElEcTrOn
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15 views

Applications - Cathodic Protection Designer

This application allows users to model cathodic protection systems for corrosion prevention in 3D geometries imported from CAD files. Users can apply boundary conditions like current densities and simulate initial, mean, and final states of protection. Output reports can be generated in common file formats. The example geometry demonstrates protection of a monopile wind turbine foundation using sacrificial anodes. Key factors like material properties, mesh resolution, and numerical solvers can be configured to study cathodic protection design scenarios.

Uploaded by

Mr ElEcTrOn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Created in COMSOL Multiphysics 6.

C a th od i c Prot ec t i on D esi gn er

This Application is licensed under the COMSOL Application License 6.2.


All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. See www.comsol.com/trademarks.
About the Cathodic Protection Designer Application
The purpose of this application is to demonstrate modeling of cathodic protection systems
in 3D. The application is capable of importing CAD geometries upon which the user will
apply boundary conditions, such as initial, mean and final fixed current densities. The
boundary conditions are similar to those depicted in DNV RP-B401-standard (Ref. 1).
The output of the simulations can be saved as a report in either HMTL, Word or
Powerpoint formats.

The application can be used as a starting point for your own models for modeling
corrosion and corrosion protection.

THE EXAMPLE GEOMETRY


The exemplified embedded geometry is a sacrificial anode protection system for a
monopile windmill fundament. A set of sacrificial anodes is connected to the cathode in
order to lower the potential of the protected surface into a regime where little, or no,
corrosion occurs. The transition piece of the monopile (top section) is coated, whereas the
monopile itself is bare steel in seawater and mud.

The only active electrode reaction on the monopile is oxygen reduction:

1 - -
H 2 O + --- O + 2e  2OH (1)
2 2

The transition piece of the monopile (top section) is coated, whereas the monopile itself
is bare steel, immersed in seawater and mud. The governing factors for the corrosion
behavior are the kinetic parameters for oxygen reduction on the surfaces, modeled by fixed
current densities describing the transport limited currents for oxygen reduction on steel
surfaces in water, as described in the DNV RP-B401(Ref. 1) standard for cathodic

2 | CATHODIC PROTECTION DESIGNER


protection of offshore structures. The figure below summarizes the graphical user
interface of the application.
Create Run Read Graphics
report study documentation

Ribbon navigation

Evaluate results
in clicked points

Evaluate Dynamic help


results

Figure 1: Graphical user interface of the Cathodic Protection Designer.

CAD Section
You may change the geometry in the app by going to the CAD section, and clearing the
geometry, and import a new geometry from a file.

The geometry CAD file should be set up using separate objects for different boundary
conditions. This means that if you have a geometry consisting of a cathode and an anode,
these two needs to be separate parts, or objects, in the cad file in order to distinguish
between the surfaces that belongs to each object.

The app can handle both solid objects (surfaces) and edge based objects. So if you want
to utilize edge based objects, for example for defining edge-based sacrificial anodes, this is
possible by separating the different parts into different objects.

The geometry oil_platform_edge.mphbin from the Corrosion Module Application


Library can be imported as an example in purely edge based structures.

3 | CATHODIC PROTECTION DESIGNER


Enclosing volume
The size of the imported objects are analyzed and gives you some rough settings for the
size and position of the electrolyte volume that enclose the geometry. In this section you
can set the size of the volume, as well as moving the seabed to your desired position.

Material
In the material section, the geometry will be analyzed and you can select which domains
that belong to seawater and mud, as well as specifying the resistivity of the electrolyte.

There is also a section for boundary and edge materials. Geometric selections may be
defined as either anodes or cathodes. For the anode you specify the polarization gradient
of a linearized polarization curve, and for edges you need to also specify the anode radius.
For cathodes, you can specify the initial, mean and final current densities (as specified in
DNV RP-B401 (Ref. 1)), as well as break down factors for surface coatings. If the selection
is an edge, you also need to specify the edge radius.

Mesh
The mesh section gives you the possibility to choose the mesh size for your model. A
coarser mesh will most often be faster to compute, but less accurate. If the meshing fails,
you may have some narrow gaps or overlaps in the CAD geometry, but by changing the
minimum element size to a smaller value, you may get the model discretized and ready for
computation

Study
In the study section, you can choose which parameters you want to compute the results
for. Choose between Initial, Mean and Final. For the Final study type, the assumed design
lifetime of the structure may be included. This affects the maximum amount of coating
breakdown factor at the final time.

In the Solver section you may select between Direct Pardiso, Iterative AMG or Iterative
GMG numerical solvers. Typically the iterative solvers require less computer memory
while solving, but may be less robust.

Click Compute to compute your selected studies.

4 | CATHODIC PROTECTION DESIGNER


Results
In the results section, you may choose to look at a Potential plot with Electrode potential
vs Reference Electrode (Ag/AgCl), Current density, or a Protection plot, where all
potentials lower than the specified protection limit are blue and the unprotected areas are
red.

You can also click in the plots to get the exact plot value at your clicking coordinates in the
Results Data-section

Report
In the report section, you can write a title, a short summary and your name. If you click
one of the buttons for HTML, Word or PowerPoint, a custom report will be made
showing your input geometry, boundary conditions, and results for all your computed
study types.

References
1. Det Norske Veritas, Recommended Practice Cathodic Protection Design,
NDV-RP-B401, October 2010.

Application Library path: Corrosion_Module/Applications/


cathodic_protecion_designer.mph

5 | CATHODIC PROTECTION DESIGNER

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