ABSTRACT
In order to reproduce the atmospheric corrosion process of weathering steel (WS), a threedimensional (3D) cellular automata (CA) based method was proposed. Firstly, the basic assumptions were made with the purpose of simplifying the complicated corrosion process. Then the evolution rules of atmospheric corrosion were proposed and the MATLAB program was developed. Secondly, the results obtained from the CA model were compared with the basic corrosion laws verified by experiments. Results show that the basic hypotheses and evolution rules are reasonable and the model is reliable, which can be used to describe and to identify the corrosion kinetics, corrosion morphology and distribution characteristics of pits for WS in atmosphere. Finally, the parameter analysis was performed. The CA model can be used to continuously predict the corrosion behaviors of WS in the long-term atmospheric corrosion process.
