Abstract
For the longer service life of steel pile, cathodic protection is selected sometimes at corrosive environment. The cathodic protection design improvement was investigated in this study. The current demand for cathodic protection was calculated from the potentiostatic current monitoring of the steel specimen in the deaerated soil samples. In this study, the current distribution was studied using the Boundary Element Method (BEM) and the Finite Element Method (FEM) numerical analysis methods. The optimum layout of the anode was developed and confirmed by numerical analysis. Under the conventional design of the anode, the length of the anode hole is same as the pile length. We found that, at the bottom end of the pile, the current density is too high. When the anode hole length was 80% of the pile length, the current consumption at the end was reduced. The construction cost of anode hole drilling was decreased about 20%, as compared to the conventional design. Furthermore, the life of the anode materials could be extended by reducing the current consumption at the end section. Using this approach, the construction cost was reduced significantly without any under-protection area on the steel piles.