Metals, determination destructive techniques

Destructive Testing. Destmctive testing is used to determine the strength of the weld and the effect of the explosion-welding process on the parent metals. Standard testing techniques can be utilized on many composites however, nonstandard or specially designed tests often are required to provide meaningful data for specific appHcations. 

Destructive techniques have been widely applied to determine the concentration of key elements In cells and other biota, but beside being Incapable of use in vivo, they offer no Information on the chemical nature of the element In question. For example, acid digestion of cells which have accumulated various organotln species, and subsequent traditional analysis by atomic absorption (AA) spectroscopy or element-specific spectrofluorlmetry, will produce quantitative data on the amount of tin present, but will reveal nothing about the coordination environment of the metal on the cell surface prior to destruction. 

Khrushchev (1957) considers that the need to measure the force T has not been sufficiently well substantiated, nor has a sufficiently precise and easy in service hardness tester been developed yet for determinations of this type. However, he appreciates the usefulness of scratch hardness tests, especially at low loads, as a non-destructive technique. He recommends these methods as very useful for hardness determination of metallic layers or of materials exposed to abrasive wear under operating conditions (plastics, organic coatings, such as varnishes and paints, etc.). Scratch methods are especially important in tests of anisotropic materials where a change in scratch width is the measure of anisotropy. In static indentation methods, the indentations obtained in anisotropic materials are misformed, varying... 

Widening interest in the quaHty of the environment has led to increased demand for information on a wide range of trace-metal contents of foodstuffs. Trace metals in foodstuffs are normally determined by spectroscopic techniques after complete destruction of the organic matrix. Destruction is achieved either by wet oxidation or by dry ashing additional treatment is normally required in order to obtain the metals of interest in a form suitable for analysis. Both methods of destruction are time consuming and tedious this is particularly true of the wet-oxidation procedure, which has the additional disadvantage of being potentially hazardous the methods require considerable analytical skill and experience. Both methods are prone to produce erroneous results either by the loss of an element of interest or by adventitious contamination from the component parts... 

Manganese in aqueous solution may be analyzed by several instrumental techniques including flame and furnace AA, ICP, ICP-MS, x-ray fluorescence and neutron activation. For atomic absorption and emission spectrometric determination the measurement may be done at the wavelengths 279.5, 257.61 or 294.92 nm respectively. The metal or its insoluble compounds must be digested with nitric acid alone or in combination with another acid. Soluble salts may be dissolved in water and the aqueous solution analyzed. X-ray methods may be applied for non-destructive determination of the metal. The detection limits in these methods are higher than those obtained by the AA or ICP methods. ICP-MS is the most sensitive technique. Several colorimetric methods also are known, but such measurements require that the manganese salts be aqueous. These methods are susceptible to interference. 

Detection can be carried out either with an on-line detector coupled to the eluent flow or by the collection and subsequent analysis of discrete fractions. For collected fractions, a range of analytical methods can be used, both quantitative (e.g., radiotracer and metal analysis) and more qualitative (e.g., microscopic techniques). On-line detectors suitable for coupling to the FFF channels include both nondestructive flow through cell systems and destructive analysis systems. It is often desirable to use on-line detection if possible because the total analysis time is much less than for discrete fraction analysis. Regardless of detector type, the dead volumes and flows in the system between the FFF channel and detector or fraction collector must be accurately determined and corrected for. 

X-ray diffraction technique is a non-destructive analytical technique that reveals information about crystallographic structure, chemical composition and physical properties of nanostructured materials. UV/Vis spectroscopy is routinely used in the quantitative determination of films of nanostructured metal oxides. The size, shape (nanocomb and nanorods etc,) and arrangement of the nanoparticles can be observed through transmission electron microscope (TEM) studies. Surface morphology of nanostructured metal oxides can be observed in atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies. 

A pyrohydrolytic technique has been described for decomposing various inorganic fluorine-containing materials, including minerals.55 The temperature recommended is 1200 °C and the aqueous solution containing F is determined by a conventional titrimetric method. Fluorine on the surface of metallic samples can be determined rapidly and non-destructively by means of the prompt y-photons (837 keV resonance) of the 19F(p,ay)160 reaction 56 the experimental sensitivity of the method is approximately 5 x 10-4 (/xg F ) cm-2. The use of an electrode sensitive to F- to measure the adsorption of F by clay minerals and soils has been investigated.57... 

The selectivity and sensitivity offered by atomic spectroscopy techniques can be used for direct and indirect determination of metals in a range of pharmaceutical preparations and compounds. Metals can be present in pharmaceutical preparations as a main ingredient, impurities, or as preservatives which can be prepared for analysis using non-destructive (direct or solvent dilution) or destructive methods (microwave acid digestion, bomb combustion, extraction, etc.) and the metal of interest measured against standards of the metal prepared in the same solvents as the sample. Methods associated with some pharmaceutical products are already described in the international pharmacopoeias and must be used in order to comply with regulations associated with these products, e.g titration techniques are carried out according to methods that are the same for all pharmaceutical products. 

A number of methods exist for the determination of parts-per-billion (ng/g) levels of chromium in aqueous media (Table 8.1). These are repeatedly reviewed as new techniques are introduced (4,5,6). Potentially all these techniques could be applied to petroleum samples after matrix destruction, but in practice, only a few have been utilized. After wet oxidation of a large sample (> 100 g), 10 to 50 fig of chromium may be determined by a colorimetric procedure with 1,5-diphenylcarbohydrazide after iron, copper, molybdenum, and vanadium are extracted as the cup-ferrates (3). In survey analyses, Cr levels as low as 5 ng/g have been measured by optical emission spectroscopy after ashing (2,3) or directly by neutron activation with extended irradiation and counting times (1). Concentrations of chromium above 100 ng/g in used lubricating oils have been measured directly by flame atomic absorption (8) for lower concentrations, heated vaporization atomic absorption (HVAA) has been utilized (9). In the Trace Metals Project, two procedures using this latter technique were evaluated for the determination of 10 ng Cr/g in a variety of petroleum matrices. 

A simple nondestructive capacitance method is proposed (Adamyan et al, 2006) for the determination of basic PSi parameters such as layer thickness, porosity and dielectric permittivity. The method is based on two comparative measurements of the capacitance of the metal/PSi/single crystalline silicon/metal structure one measurement is taken when there are air-filled pores, while the other measurement involves pores filled by an organic compound with a high value of dielectric permittivity. Comparison of results obtained in Adamyan et al. (2006) by the ball lap and the gravimetric techniques before and after anodization, with the data of capacitance measurements carried out with the same samples prior to their destruction, shows sufficiently good agreement. 

This technique can be used to conduct destructive or non-destructive analysis of polymers. XRF spectrometry has been used extensively for the determination of traces of metals and non-metals in polyolefins and other polymers. The technique has also been used in the determination of major metallic constituents in polymers, such as cadmium selenide pigment in polyolefins. 

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