Among the tools most widely used by a corrosion engineer or technician are a reference electrode and a voltmeter. With them, corrosion potential measurements can be made to assist in determining corrosion of a structure or the effectiveness of a cathodic protection system.
However, there are sources of error in these measurements. This paper will discuss some of the more common sources of error and how to reduce them as much as practical.
Keywords: potential measurements, reference electrodes, error sources, IR drop error