Galvanic Anode Cathodic Polarization of Steel in Seawater: Part IV Conductor Arrays on Petroleum Production Platforms

The difficulty of designing and providing adequate cathodic protection (CP) for conductor arrays on offshore structures has been recognized historically. Limitations of the presently practiced CP design procedure for this specific application were reviewed, and advantages and shortcomings of the recently proposed slope parameter approach were evaluated. A procedure for calculating the resistance of a conductor array was introduced, and it was demonstrated how the slope parameter could be determined from this, along with the optimum anode design, including size, shape, and number. An experiment was performed where resistance of a miniaturized, simulated conductor array was measured in seawater. Results were compared with those from the analytical design method.