Atmospheric corrosion mapping of copper surfaces from diffuse light scattering measurements by an optoelectronic sensor system

A novel light scattering technique for mapping metal surface corrosion is presented and its results on copper exposed to atmosphere are reported. The front end of the instrument is made up of a sensor module comprising a thin beam light emitting diode (LED) illuminating a small spot on the metal surface, and a matched pair of photodetectors, one for capturing the reflected light and the other for sampling the scattered light. The analog photocurrent signals are digitized and processed online by a personal computer (PC) to determine the corrosion factor defined in terms of the two current values. By scanning the sample surface using the light beam and by computing the corrosion factor values simultaneously, a three dimensional graph and a two dimensional contour map are generated in the PC using Matlab tools. The values of the corrosion factor measured in different durations of exposure to atmosphere, which obey a bilogarithmic law, testify to the validity of our mathematical model.