Estimation of the Amount of Wind-driven Salt Affected by Geography and Adhesion of the Particles to Steel Structures

Abstract

There exist many important civil engineering steel structures which have been used for more than several decades, and the importance of proper maintenance of these structures is increasing more and more in the future. Airflow distribution around a structure is recognized as one of the factors causing the difference of corrosion state, and corrosion progresses remarkably in the salt particle flying areas. In this paper, we examined simulation methods composed of two stages to estimate the amount of wind-driven salt and adhesion of the particles to structures. The fast stage consists of numerical airflow analyses considering local geography and simulation of wind-driven salt particles based on the airflow analyses, and the second stage is simulation of adhesion of the particles to structures by cellular automata (CA). It is confirmed that the simulation methods investigated in this paper are applicable to maintenance of corroded steel structures.