Validación de la operación de la cámara de corrosión del laboratorio de ensayos no destructivos e integridad superficial, aplicando el método de velocidad de corrosión por pérdida de masa

Abstract

This research aimed to validate the operation of the corrosion chamber equipment in the Non-Destructive Testing Laboratory of Mechanics Faculty at ESPOCH. This equipment was used to conduct corrosion tests, but its operation had yet to be approved. Therefore, validation was carried out by applying the mass loss corrosion rate method on ASTM A36 steel specimens with different corrosion protection mechanisms. The investigation involved preparing four groups of steel specimens, which were weighed before and after being placed in the corrosion chamber. Based on the mass loss, the corrosion rate was calculated and compared with the corrosion rate of the corresponding samples from the research station in the city of Milagro. A statistical analysis of the corrosion rate of the samples was performed using Python. This analysis included a Shapiro-Wilks test and a Student t-test. The results indicate that the ASTM A36 steel specimens without coating, coated, galvanized, and those with cathodic protection statistically differ in their corrosion rate compared with the samples previously studied in Adelca. Furthermore, the statistical results obtained specify that the corrosion chamber does not replicate the conditions for the study of these four groups of samples. However, it can be used to analyze other materials where the conditions are fixed, and it is not required to replicate other environments. This is because the p-value obtained is less than 0.05 for the four groups, which means that the alternative hypothesis is accepted and details a difference between the means of these groups of samples.