APPLICATION OF THE SLOPE PARAMETER APPROACH TO CATHODIC PROTECTION DESIGN OF CONDUCTOR ARRAYS ON OFFSHORE STRUCTURES

摘要

The difficulty of designing and providing adequate cathodic protection for conductor arrays on offshore structures has been recognized historically. Limitations of the presently practiced cathodic protection design procedure for this specific application are reviewed, and advantages and shortcomings of the recently proposed slope parameter approach are evaluated. A procedure for calculating the resistance of a conductor array is introduced, and it is demonstrated how the slope parameter can be determined from this, along with the optimum anode design, including size, shape and number. An experiment was performed where resistance of a miniaturized, simulated conductor array was measured in sea water; and the results are compared with those from the analytical design method.