Prevention and protection
Corrosion and protection of metals in marine media

The fight against corrosion starts with the choice of materials and the design of parts. By virtue of the facts established above, in the case of the marine environment it is imperative:

• to avoid or minimise all containment zones, which favour the mechanisms of localised corrosion (pitting or crevice corrosion);

• not to assemble together materials with non-compatible electrochemical properties, which risks encouraging galvanic corrosion.

When designing a structure for immersion in the sea, an assessment must be carried out to define which alloys are to be used and how they are to be protected. According to the galvanic series of metallic materials in seawater (Table