CHAI-Joint project

Clever corrosion management for ports and waterways in Schleswig-Holstein using automated infrastructure monitoring

Corrosion leads to the impairment and loss of function of structural components in maritime areas. In Schleswig-Holstein, these areas include the harbour in Kiel and the flood gate in Brunsbüttel. Although coating systems help to mitigate the effects of corrosion, they can be impaired by a wide variety of influencing factors leading to corrosion-damages damage and material fatigue.
As this is associated with immense costs, the integrity of such coating systems and steel structures must be extensively monitored in order to detect damage early on and assess the severity. However, scheduled maintenance and inspection of infrastructures is associated with high costs. Towards this end, the CHAI project is developing methods that allow the introduction of a predictive maintenance strategy. The overarching objective is therefore to detect (critical) damage as early as possible and to prioritise it in terms of maintenance requirements, effort and costs.
It was observed that the locally dependent water quality can influence the stages of corrosion that occur, renders standardised monitoring very challenging. As part of the project, the partners strive to establish the necessary infrastructure for monitoring environmental conditions and detecting and assessing corrosion damage at two locations. The collected data obtained will also serve as a training database for the development of data-driven prediction models for estimating maintenance intervals.

The CHAI project is funded by the Staatskanzlei of Schleswig-Holstein as part of the „Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz in Schleswig-Holstein" funding scheme.