Electrolysis!
One day of deployment, 24 hours of time elapsed, and this is what ourpressure transducer looked like:
That's a stainless steel housing, meant for use in harsh environments,which the ocean probably qualifies as. The tip that looks broken off issimply corroded away to the water line. The pressure transducer wasmounted upside down at an angle in a tide pool, so you can do the mathon the picture above and figure out just how much the transducer wassubmerged when the pool was filled. Most likely there was some internalfault in the housing that was passing current through the housing toground, allowing this electrolysis to happen. We have a similar Omegatransducer to this one that has survived well over a year mounted in thesame location out in the field, so we know the design works normally.This particular Omega PX176-025A5V was doomed to lead a short life forsome reason.
That's a stainless steel housing, meant for use in harsh environments,which the ocean probably qualifies as. The tip that looks broken off issimply corroded away to the water line. The pressure transducer wasmounted upside down at an angle in a tide pool, so you can do the mathon the picture above and figure out just how much the transducer wassubmerged when the pool was filled. Most likely there was some internalfault in the housing that was passing current through the housing toground, allowing this electrolysis to happen. We have a similar Omegatransducer to this one that has survived well over a year mounted in thesame location out in the field, so we know the design works normally.This particular Omega PX176-025A5V was doomed to lead a short life forsome reason.
posted by Luke Miller at 10:29 AM 
