Department of Chemistry
Date of this Version
2009
Abstract
The USS Arizona Preservation project is a multi-year, interdisciplinary and cumulative effort with each discipline contributing to basic research required to make informed management decisions for long-term preservation. Three significant issues include: (1) USS Arizona is a grave site for 900 or more Navy and Marine personal lost with the USS Arizona when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. (2) Minimizing environmental hazard from a potential fuel oil release of an estimated 500,000 gallons remaining in fuel bunkers or compartment overheads. A cross section view of the ship and bunkers before and after the attack is shown in Fig. 1. (3) Over 1.5 million visitors a year consider the vessel a national icon. Research and any solution to the oil issue incorporates a minimum impact approach. The primary goal of the project is to characterize complex deterioration processes and utilize finite element modeling (FEM) to predict stability in the context of a variety of interdisciplinary inputs including geology, oceanography, microbiology, oil analysis, structures, environmental parameters and corrosion. In addition to informing management, the research has produced results applicable to thousands of submerged steel vessels worldwide. The following is a discussion of corrosion research on USS Arizona and application of the Concretion Equivalent Corrosion Rate (CECR) methodology.
Comments
Published in Microsc Microanal 15(Suppl 2), 2009. Copyright 2009 Microscopy Society of America. Used by permission.