There is long experience with galvanic cathodic protection of ship hulls but in the recent past
there has been a need for cutting down repair costs. In order to improve the corrosion protection
design and to extent ship’s life great attention has been paid to modeling and understanding
electrochemistry-current distribution.
From a practical point of view, the best way to retrofit the design criteria would be to check
the galvanic anodes real consumption during replacement operations when ships are dry docking at
shipyard for the biannual hull inspection; unfortunately, this is not a standard procedure. In order to
decrease dry dock stay costs, anodes are cut and put away soon after the ship has been cleaned
and inspected for repair.
The aim of the present paper is to assess the cathodic protection system performance of
several ships in order to improve the design. Individual consumption, corrosion potential and
efficiency of the anodes were evaluated.
A new design has been proposed based on the results obtained.