The correlation of acoustic emission with rate of corrosion

An attempt was made to correlate acoustic emission activities with the rate of corrosion in mild steel. Results obtained from a series of experiments indicate that there is such a correlation, making it possible to detect the different stages of corrosion, namely uniform corrosion, non-uniform corrosion and intense localised corrosion, based on the observed acoustic emission count rate. The acoustic emission signals emitted from the corrosion activities were of sufficient magnitude to be easily detected by piezoelectric transducers. The results demonstrate that the acoustic emission technique can be used to monitor and predict the rate of corrosion.