Basis for life prediction analysis
- All engineering materials are simply reactive chemicals that, in some
environments, will dissolve as rapidly as table salt in hot water. The
surprise is never that materials fail; the surprise should be that these
reactive materials work.
- Materials fail in the environments which are specifically adjacent to the
surface and not in the bulk environment. These local environments are
greatly influenced by prior history of exposure, flow, buildup of deposits
and local cells.
- What appears to be imponderable complexity in corrosion can be handled and
bounded by explicit consideration of specific possible environments and
modes of corrosion that can occur. Corrosion is not magic.
- Analyses that underlie prediction here are the opposite of justice: guilty
until proven innocent, i.e. the analysis has to be pursued until the idea is
shown to be valid or irrelevant.
Lifetime Prediction, Roger W. Staehle,
Adjunct Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
University of Minnesota, Staehle
Consulting Co.