Metallic materials are the mainstay of engineering. The most widely used metals in industry, in construction and in our everyday life are carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminium. All these metals are susceptible to deterioration while they are being used, due to corrosive action in the environment to which they are exposed.
The way in which damage appears in our structure or equipment will depend on the interaction between the metal and the environment. The scope of the corrosion will be subject to the environment's aggressiveness.
The severity of the damage will depend on the component's criticality:
- In applications in which we know how the metal behaves, where we can increase the thickness or section of the component, and where the aesthetic factor is not critical, the metal can coexist with corrosion throughout its entire useful life.
- In other places we will need to delay corrosion as much as possible, and when it does appear, we must control it to prevent failure until it is eventually replaced.
- There will be strategic projects in which corrosion must never appear throughout the entire useful life of the component or structure.
In order to deal with corrosion failure one must:
- Carry out a preliminary study of the type of work environment and select the most suitable material or material with coating.
- Analyse the deterioration of a component that has already been used and identify what caused the failure.
CONTENT
- We will explain the methodology to be followed in order to carry out a successful corrosion failure analysis.
- We will give several practical examples.
LECTURER
- María Vaquero – Technician in the Materials Engineering Group of the Lab_services Area.
TARGET AUDIENCE
- Persons responsible for the design, manufacture and operation/maintenance of systems and components.
- Reliability and Maintenance Managers.
- Quality Managers in component and metal structure manufacture.
- Technical Offices.
- Component Design Technicians.
- Risk Managers.