Corrosion is degradation of a metal due to its interaction with the surrounding environment. The presence of corrosion on or within structures is of major concern as corrosion reduces the integrity of the materials which could potentially result in large-scale failures of structures and equipment.  This is of particular concern to the United States Department of Defense (DOD) as corrosion can put armed service members in harm’s way due to a decrease in equipment readiness in preparation for battle.  Maintaining equipment in preparation for use on the battlefield requires a significant amount of labor and material cost which the taxpayer ultimately funds.  According to the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) IMPACT Study, the direct cost of corrosion maintenance to the DOD is estimated to be \~\$20 billion per year (in fiscal year 2005 dollars).  Because of this the DOD is interested in finding, eliminating or at least mitigating costly sources of corrosion on DOD assets.  One such asset is the 85’ MKVI Patrol Boat used by the Navy to secure the shores near Guam.  On the patrol boat is a MK50 weapon station that has a friction brake assembly used to prevent large amounts of weapon recoil during combat.  However, it was noticed that the friction brakes recently installed on the MK50 weapon station were beginning to experience large amounts of corrosion which could compromise its ability to fire during combat.  Therefore, the Navy is interested in determining the cause of the corrosion and developing a solution to prevent it from occurring further.

This work presents the characterization of the materials used in the MK50 weapon station friction brake assembly to understand the cause of the corrosion and proposes a material engineering solution to the design in hopes of preventing further corrosion and improving its readiness for battle.  In order to characterize the materials used in the friction brake assembly, elemental analysis was performed using an emission spark test and energy dispersion X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) on each of the friction brake components and other steel samples with known compositions for comparison.  Additionally, the electrochemical activity of the components was investigated using polarization curves in an artificial saltwater solution to mimic the environmental conditions that resulted in the corrosion of the friction brake assembly in Guam.  Finally, we compared the polarization curves of the friction brake system components with similar components of different elemental compositions and propose a solution to the observed corrosion occurring in the friction brake assembly.


Corrosion Evaluation of a Navy MK50 Weapon Station Friction Brake Assembly

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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