Numerical sensitivity analysis of corrosion detection

Abstract

The aim of the present work is the detection of corrosion damage along the inaccessible part of the boundary of a body under investigation. The data of the problem, besides all the information relative to the domain such as the geometry and the conductivity of the body, are the prescribed current fluxes and voltage measurements on the accessible part of the boundary. This constitutes, in general, a nonlinear inverse problem whose ill-posed feature requires a suitable solution procedure. The strategy proposed here is based on a linearization of the Robin boundary condition on the inaccessible part of the boundary and on the identification of a resistivity parameter related to the corroded surface. Besides giving a strategy to evaluate the corrosion damage parameter, this paper tries to sketch a sensitivity analysis of the computed solution with respect to all factors affecting the available information relative to the accessible boundary, such as the quantity and quality of data and the unavoidable errors corrupting the compatibility of the measured data.