A Stand Alone Environmental Corrosivity Measurement System

Corrosion problems experienced by military equipment are severe and expensive; estimates for the Navy alone are more than $1 billion annually. To reduce these costs it is imperative that equipment be monitored for exposure to corrosive environments. Quantitative monitoring programs will help to better understand how to best mitigate the effects of these environments. The opportunity presented here is the development of an integrated environmental monitoring system so that data which characterizes the corrosivity of the environment can be gathered. The instrument will incorporate an innovative integrated sensor suite capable of monitoring temperature, humidity, rainfall conductivity, and corrosivity (e.g. galvanic activity) data over a wide-range of operating conditions. The data acquisition system will be based on a small but sophisticated Micro- Computer Unit which will gather data over long periods of time. Use of this advanced technology will result in a small, lightweight system which can be used in shipboard, airborne, and ground station applications. The primary focus in Phase I is to prove the feasibility by 1) integrating sensors which can accurately and reliably measure these parameters into a stand-alone package using thin-film deposition techniques and 2) demonstrating a prototypical signal conditioning and data acquisition system with remote data retrieval capabilities.