Stress Corrosion Cracking Malaysia | Fight Cracking Failure

Stress corrosion cracking failure has always been one of the major problems inflicting many industrial applications, especially within the petrochemical and process industries. Stress corrosion causes normally ductile and strong alloys to fail in an essentially brittle manner upon exposure to a certain environment at relatively low stresses. This might seem trivial but might potentially lead to a catastrophic effect such as building parts collapse and storage tanks leakage.
Stress corrosion cracking is caused by the effects of tensile stress and the prolonged exposure to a corrosive environment. Examples of well-known corrosive environment include chloride with austenitic stainless steels and ammonia with copper alloys. Occasionally new environments capable of causing stress corrosion cracking are found, but generally, chloride stress corrosion cracking is more common especially in glove manufacturing factories.
Numerous potentially aggressive chemical environments are found in the process industry sector and hence making stress corrosion cracking the principal mode of failure of plant equipment, sometimes accounting for up to 25% of major failures in the oil industry.
To solve this stress corrosion cracking problem, first of all, one must equip himself with some knowledge about steel selection. In an environment that is more likely to cause stress corrosion cracking, steels that are inherently more resistant to SCC should be chosen. A good knowledge of SCC may potentially help you to save a lot of money. In practice, a lot of companies usually opt to replace the austenitic steels with a much more expensive titanium alloys to cope with the problem of SCC when in actual fact, one of the cheaper substitutes of duplex stainless steels will suffice.
Next, surface treatment such as shot peening and surface burnishing can be employed to produce compressive stresses, which are beneficial in preventing SCC. However, one key point in using this method is to use corrosion resistant steel shot or glass beads to avoid anodic corrosion of the surface.
Lastly, one can also opt for a more sustainable and cost-effective solution which is to apply anti –corrosion protective coating on the metal surfaces. Coatings are generally helpful in minimizing stress corrosion apart from strengthening the metal structure due to additional layer applied.
Metal Roof Doctor specializes in providing you with protective coating service for your facilities which are neither poisonous to human nor harmful to the environment. Our protective coating aims not just to prevent stress corrosion cracking from occurring on your precious assets, but also to prevent future risk of rust problems. Both stress corrosion and rust can accelerate the embrittlement of your equipment and metal roofs which can inflict a severe tangible and intangible damage to your company. Let us help you by contacting us. Call us now!