Skip to main content

Corrosion in daily life - Steel frames on a balcony

Corrosion in daily life - Steel frames




Looking at LinkedIn, corrosion may feel like an extremely intricate issue seen in large industries.


However, looking around, we can see corrosion everywhere!

Where was this photo taken?

The photo above is of a steel frame attached to a balcony. 


The part shown here is the bottom part of the frame.

The coatings for such steel parts usually serve the purpose of moderate corrosion protection and more of aesthetics. If you observe, the thickness of the coatings also does not seem to be a lot.

Why did the coating degrade?

When it rains, the rainwater collects on the bottom of the frames. 


This degrades the coating. At the places where it is not perfect anyway, the underlying steel is free to corrode.

Most importantly, corrosion is more severe at the edges. It is severe enough to chip off the material entirely. That point is a prime site for crack formation and breaking of the frame.

Have you seen such corrosion in your balcony frame? Let me know in the comment section!

In the mean time, check out the free quizzes here!


😀Happy learning!😀



Comments

  1. A quick dose of daily corrosion. Thanks for posting ma'am.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would look in to it as forgotton phenomena. It is true that we see such instances in our day-to-life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is a great idea! Thank you for your suggestion!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Welcome to the CORROSPECTIVE BLOG! Scroll along for more posts! Looking forward to your feedback!
P.S. Don't forget to check out the free quizzes!

Popular posts from this blog

Resources for a corrosion beginner

Corrosion is a complex subject. It is difficult to pick and choose the starting point. It is very easy to spiral into a confused state of mind if the right resources are not available. Hence, I write this blog post to list out a few books which are great if you are a corrosion enthusiast. Here goes - 1. Corrosion Engineering by Mars. G Fontana          I love this book and I always refer to it for my work. 2. Peabody's control of pipeline corrosion -  3. Corrosion engineering - Principles and practice - Pierre Roberge The website www.corrosion-doctors.org has a more extensive list of corrosion articles. Other than that, there are online corrosion magazines which you can access - 1. Materials performance -  www.materialsperformance.com 2. corrosionpedia.com 3. CORROSION journal  meridian.allenpress.com/corrosion -  it has a few open access articles. Check out these resources as a starting point!

The drain mystery

I recently moved to a new house. As expected, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. One of the tasks was the cleaning of the washbasin. Usually, the drain is a circular part with  5 to 6 holes for the water to flow out. What I saw was this - I have not had a chance to analyse the material of the drain. However, a quick search tells me that this is most probably stainless steel. The water that this drain is exposed to is the bore water. Thus, the drain has encountered a lot of chlorides. There is general as well as localized corrosion. The damage started off as a simple process of pitting. Pitting due to chlorides is one of the most common headaches for poor stainless steel. They break the passive oxide film, and reach the underlying fresh iron. This iron then reacts with the usual suspects (ions, oxygen, water) and forms what we see as the rust. As can be seen in the picture, the thin sections of the drain between the holes have disappeared in three places. This may have h...

Corrosion in fertilizer industry - 1.2 Elemental sulphur attack

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE OR READ ON BELOW!  Elemental sulphur attack is NOT sulphidation or hydrogen sulphide corrosion. It is an aqueous corrosion phenomenon. It considers two modes -  acidification of sulphur - formation of sulphuric acid 2.      direct cathodic reduction of sulphur with anodic dissolution of iron The lowering of pH is the main source of corrosion in both the methods. The phenomenon is temperature dependent. It increases with increase in temperature and becomes particularly severe above the melting point of sulphur (~112.8 degree Celsius). Hydrogen sulphide present in the petroleum may aggravate the sulphur attack by enhancing uniform pitting corrosion. Monoethylene glycol is used to prevent condensate formation ans may be present in traces in the feedstock petroleum. This enhances the sulphur attack in the form of uniform corrosion, and crevice corrosion. References:  Fang, Haitao, Brown, Bruce, Young, David, and Srdjan Nešic. "Investigation...