Accurate prediction of unknown corrosion currents distributed on the hull of a naval ship utilizing material sensitivity analysis

This paper presents an efficient approach to determining the corrosion currents distributed on the hull of a naval ship, which offer useful information for underwater electric fields prediction and diagnosis of hull corrosion state. To achieve this, a material sensitivity formula, which gives the first-order gradient information of an objective function with respect to the electric current, is analytically derived. The validity of the method has been proved through the comparison of the predicted and the targeted fields for a test ship model.