Metallurgy and Materials Science quiz

Metallurgy and Materials Science quiz - 4

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3 steps to begin experiments...aka...I am lost in this lab!

All the students in the first few days of research are faced with the dilemma of the right time and way to begin experimentation. There are as many ways and thought processes to do so as there are people. I will share my learnings here. The problem is that the literature review tends to become so vast that it is difficult to decide what the exact problem is. 1. The best way is to NOT WAIT for the literature review to get over. Begin with the experiments simultaneously. Gain experience on as many new techniques as possible. 2. Start with that research paper which will most likely form the basis of your work. Attempt to reproduce the experiments in the paper. Try to see what other experiments can corroborate those results. 3. Select the correct research papers to continue the literature review. P.S. All the experiments should have a reason for doing them. You should be able to answer the question 'Why should I do this experiment? What will I learn?'

Corrosion rate and pipe design

Corrosion is a serious issue. However, corrosion engineers are rarely asked about it during the designing of components. It is only when the components fail that people remember there are people who have studied corrosion for their whole life and would provide a solution. The design problems are really quite simple, and the loss of money could have been avoided had the company bothered to involve a corrosion engineer in the first place. Let me illustrate this with an example of a factory near the sea. Suppose a mild steel pipe is fitted inside the factory to transport 1 wt. % hydrochloric acid. The engineer has a choice between selecting pipes of 5 mm and 10 mm thickness. To save money, they go for the pipe with the 5 mm thickness because it has been 'successfully used by the other customers'. Over the course of a year, it is seen that the pipe has started leaking at certain places. Further investigation reveals that those sections have thinned to half of their thickn...

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...

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