AC-Induced Corrosion of Underground Steel Pipelines. Faradaic Rectification under Cathodic Protection: I. Theoretical Approach with Negligible Electrolyte Resistance

Underground pipelines protected with a thick coating and by cathodic polarisation may suffer a serious external corrosion damage in the presence of stray alternating current (AC) voltage induced by high voltage industrial electric transport system, such as power lines or electrified railroads. The origin of the corrosion enhancement comes from the nonlinearity of the currentpotential characteristics of the metal-soil interface. In this paper, we will theoretically evaluate the increase of the corrosion current density and the potential shift induced by a high amplitude AC signal to models of corroding systems: anodic polarisation curves obeying an exponential law with respect to the potential, and cathodic process under the mixed activation-diffusion kinetics. The originality of the present work lies in the use of a relatively small number of dimensionless variables to describe the faradaic rectification for the corrosion potential shift and the corrosion current enhancement. In this article, the effect of the electrolyte resistance was neglected.