Corrosion Behaviors of Different Aluminum Allyos and Cathodic Protection Application to the Amphibious Military Vehicles

The Amphibious Assault Bridge vehicle was designed and produced by FNSS Defense Systems Inc. Purpose of this vehicle is bridging over the rivers and letting pass the other vehicles easily. However, some of the vehicles are being used in seawater instead of fresh water. This leads to corrosion of the vehicles at higher rate than expected. It was not possible to adopt modifications of design of the vehicle, improving coating quality, changing the environment and etc. because the vehicles were already produced and they were in service. Thus, FNSS has decided to use cathodic protection method. To this end, the vehicle hull produced by welding of various 5000 series aluminum used on the vehicle was characterized and cathodic protection simulation was applied to optimize the corrosion protection