Atmospheric Corrosion in the Tropics: The Costa Rican Central Valley Case

The Western Central Valley (WCV) of Costa Rica is an area of interest, due to its high concentration of population and economic activity, presenting itself as a tropical monsoon-type atmospheric basin (AB), with well-defined climatic seasons (dry and rainy). The present study proposes the assessment of low carbon steel (CS) atmospheric corrosion, based on ISO 9223 (2012) and associated standards. A general analysis of the atmospheric basin effect was initially performed on these data, followed by the basic modeling of air pollutants and meteorological parameters. The WCV is an area of low contamination, which corresponds to a C2 or C3 category, according to ISO 9223. It mainly shows significant climatic seasons (dry and rainy) effects on the initial corrosion rates, but obtaining similar annual corrosion results for them. The ISO 9223 annual atmospheric corrosion model overestimated the actual obtained corrosion values, whereas linear or logarithmic models gave better results, especially when time and/or time of wetness (TOW) were considered as variables.