EN 50125-1 Standard for Railways 🔴 With so many short forms used in our work all around, it gets confusing and it is also not possible to remember/know all of them. So here's something new. 🔴 I will take up one short form/standard name and describe in a couple of lines what it is. Some of you may be familiar with some of the common ones. Today it is 📌 EN 50125-1 📌 🔴 EN stands for European standards. 🔴 EN 50125-1 is the standard used in railways to determine if the equipment (material, design) is compatible with the environmental conditions in Europe. 🔴Simply put, if you are in charge of design and manufacturing of a railway part, you have to look at this standard to see the environmental condition in the area of operation of the train. 🔴 The selection of the material, design, surface treatments, have to be then decided depending on how severe the environment is (sunny/cold/wind/snow etc.) Check out the free corrosion quizzes  here ! https://corrospective.com/ 😀Happy ...

Types of MARINE corrosion The marine environment is one of the most corrosive environments.  Its corrosivity is due to the ionic concentration of the seas and oceans, temperature variations, wind velocities, depth of the sea, and biological elements. As a result, the corrosion on marine structures such as ships, FPSO, and offshore platforms, appears in multiple forms. Hence, it is important to learn about the basic types of corrosion as applicable to the marine environment. Some of these types of corrosion in a marine environment are - Uniform corrosion due to sodium, magnesium, and calcium salts Uniform corrosion is characterized by the removal of the material all over the surface. It leads to thinning of the walls. Pitting in active-passive alloys such as aluminium Active-passive alloys have a thin oxide film on the surface. A small break due to the chlorides in the seawater allows the penetration of the water and ions, leading to pit formation. Crevice corrosion in fixtures and ...

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All of us corrosion people head out of the house to work on coatings. And yet, we leave so many types of coatings behind in our house. The most commonly seen commodity is an electric box with switches. Usually they are coated.  This is an example of such an electric box. It shows blisters formed in the white coating. Such blistering occurs when water penetrates the pores in the coating.  Usually such parts do not come under the 'critical' category. Hence, the coatings are not very thick. Moreover, there is no coating inspector involved during the application. As a result, they are prone to early degradation. However, their position plays an important role in determining this time frame. Those boxes present outside the hose are exposed to the heat and cold. Usually they will be in a shaded area. So, they may not face the rain directly. Some boxes are inside the house in rooms. Those face the least coating damage. The image above is from an electric box in a bathroom...

Practice, practice, practice... and you shall gain the certificate! So here goes a new series, where I will post quizzes on various corrosion and coating topics. This is for anyone who likes quizzes, and ESPECIALLY for those attempting exams! So here goes the first one!  Subscribe to this blog for updates!  Loading…

I am someone who loves to study. This may sound 'nerdy'. In fact, someone called me that once. I was almost 22 and even then I was OFFENDED. Hah! This is something so many of us have struggled with. In fact, just to not be a 'nerd', there are people who have simply stopped studying as much as they used to. After all 'OMG, you study so much!' is not really 'cool' after a certain age. Not anymore! I have learned that everyone is 'nerdy' in their own way, even those who pride themselves of being 'laid back' and proceed to call others 'nerds'.  So, here's to you, the sports lover. YES, I am looking at you. If you can mouth off the statistics for your favourite team, you are a nerd, only a sports one. In fact when I get hold of a magazine for corrosion, I have to take a deep breath and choose which article to read. Obviously, I want to read all the articles at once! There is so much to learn, especially in terms of scie...

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!

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...

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 is the journey of an element from its most active form to its most stable form.  The birth At the place of its birth, inside the earth, an element such as iron comes into contact with atmospheric oxygen, chlorides, sulphate, and moisture. and is quite happy to remain in peace with them in the form of Fe 2 O 3 , Fe 3 O 4 , FeCl 3 and such. The growth It is then extracted and made to go through a number of processes which separate it from the ions and bring it to its elemental form. It is then put into use to make steel, where it coexists with carbon, manganese, chromium, and other alloying elements. The interaction However, iron has three electrons that it desperately need to give away. That is exactly what it does the moment the steel is brought out from the factory and put outside in the shed. Iron is more than happy to reunite with its old buddies - oxygen and moisture. It gladly gives away its electrons to them and returns to its peaceful state of Fe 2 O 3...