A REVIEW OF THE PROBABILISTIC ASPECTS OF LOCALIZED CORROSION

Localized corrosion has a stochastic character by nature. This character leads to an observed random behavior: fluctuations of the free potential, fluctuations of the current when a constant potential is maintained. This random signal, which is similar to an electric noise, can be analyzed either in the time domain by counting the events or in the frequency domain by measuring the power spectral density of the electrochemical noise. The experimental techniques developed for investigating the localized corrosion on the probabilistic point of view, i.e., statistical counting and power spectral density measurements, are briefly recalled. Then the experimental results reported in the literature are reviewed in order to see what kind of parameters are accessible and how they can be related to the localized corrosion processes.