By use of recurrence quantification analysis (RQA), twelve features were extracted from the electrochemical noise signals generated by three types of corrosion: uniform, pitting and passivation. Machine learning methods, i.e. linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and random forests (RF), were used to identify the different corrosion types from those features. Both models gave satisfactory performance, but the RF model showed better prediction accuracy of 93% than the LDA model (88%). Furthermore, an estimation of the importance of the variables by use of the RF model suggested the RQA variables laminarity (LAM) and determinism (DET) played the most significant role with regard to identification of corrosion types. In addition, the comparison of noise resistance with the resistance obtained from EIS measurement showed that the noise resistance can be used for monitoring corrosion rate variations not only for uniform corrosion and passivation, but also for pitting. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.