ABSTRACT

Impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) systems have been employed with coatings to prevent corrosion on the hulls of ice breakers. Many ICCP systems used for commercial vessels are designed based on the designer’s experiences rather than by analytical method. The purpose of this paper is to simulate the performance of ICCP systems on hulls under Arctic conditions by a computational analysis based on boundary element methods (BEM) and to deduce an optimized design from this. For this purpose, an Arctic shuttle tanker that will travel across the Barents Sea was investigated. The coating breakdown factors at the end of the design life were assumed to range from 1% to 5% depending on the ice strengthening areas of the hull. This design optimization process consists of a series of calculations of the structure potential with several cases of ICCP system arrangements and reference cell target potentials. The effects of these factors were studied under Arctic conditions. Those show that the potential distributions on the hull and through it the optimized design of ICCP systems is suggested resulting levels of protection under service conditions. Results suggested an optimized design for ICCP systems for potential distributions on and through the hull, along with resulting levels of protection.

This content is only available via PDF.
You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.