Prediction of galvanic corrosion rates by the boundary element method (Q2277788)

This paper presents a numerical method for solving a mixed, nonlinear boundary value problem for the Laplace equation arising in the study of galvanic corrosion. The resulting system is of the form \(\Delta \phi =0\) in \(\Omega\), \(\alpha \phi +\beta \partial \phi /\partial \nu =f\) on \(S_ 1\), \(\phi +g(\partial \phi /\partial \nu)=0\) on \(S_ 2\), where \(\alpha\), \(\beta\), f and g are specified functions, and \(\partial \Omega\) is decomposed into \(S_ 1\) and \(S_ 2.\) A numerical solution is obtained by way of a boundary element formulation; the discretization leads to a nonlinear system of equations. No theoretical convergence results are presented. Numerical predictions are compared to experimental values. Also considered is the inverse problem of using values of \(\phi\) in \(\Omega\) to estimate g.