Texas A&M University Marine Corrosion Facility, Galveston, Texas.

Abstract

During the past year, Texas A&M University has set up a Marine Test Facility at the Texas A&M Campus at Galveston, Texas. This facility is an outgrowth of a meeting of the Corrosion Advisory Group of Texas A&M's Corrosion Laboratory. During our initial advisory council meeting, the group suggested that one area where there was a lack of corrosion data was for metals in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of this suggestion, we established a seawater facility at the Texas A&M University at Galveston campus on Pelican Island, at Galveston, Texas. Eleven alloys will be tested during the beginning phase of the investigation. At dock sites, specimens will be submerged and placed in a tidal zone where they will be alternately wet and dried. The tide rises and falls between 12 and 18 inches in a boat basin where the samples will be exposed. In addition, there is flowing seawater available in a laboratory building on the Galveston Campus. The laboratory samples, using piped in seawater, will be only tested in immersion. The paper will describe the setup of the facility, and the initial test results from the first six months of testing will be reported. This will enable us to better understand the variations that apparently occur in the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.