Surface Engineering to Combat Corrosion and Wear

The Economic Effects of Corrosion and Wear. The progressive deterioration, due to corrosion and wear, of metallic surfaces in use in major industrial plants ultimately leads to loss of plant efficiency and at worst a shutdown. Corrosion and wear damage to materials, both directly and indirectly, costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars annually. For example, corrosion of metals costs the U.S. economy almost 300 billion per year at current prices. This amounts to about 4.2% of the gross national product 

However, about 40% of the total cost could be avoided by proper corrosion prevention methods. Table 2 provides a breakdown of the cost of metallic corrosion in the United States. Similar studies on wear failures have shown that the wear of materials costs the U.S. economy about 20 billion per year (in 1978 dollars) compared to about 80 billion annually (see Table 2) for corrosion during the same period. Table 3 illustrates the extent of wear failures by various operations within specific industrial segments. Highway vehicles alone use annually 14,6(K) X 10 Btu/ton of energy represented in lost weight of steel and 18.6% of this energy could be saved through effective wear-control measures. 

Methods of corrosion protection employed to protect steel include  

Application of corrosion-resistant coatings is one of the most widely used means of protecting steel. As shown in Table 1, there are a wide variety of coatings to choose from, and proper selection is based on the component size and accessibility, the corrosive environment, the anticipated 

Removes protective oxidized metal and polarized coatings to expose unoxidized metal, in addition to removing metal particles. 

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