Corrosion Engineering

Lecture 5 Corrosion Testing

Jafar Abdullah Ali, PhD.

[email protected]
Petroleum Engineering Department
Koya University

Feb. 2020
Introduction
• A large number of factors affect corrosion behaviour, and therefore
there is no universal corrosion test.
• The most reliable indication of corrosion behaviour is service history.
However, that information is rarely available exactly as needed,
• and therefore other tests are required, ranging from simple field trials
to highly accelerated laboratory tests.
• It is the need to obtain information beyond the service history that
introduces ambiguity into corrosion testing.

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Introduction
• However, because the corrosion mechanism of a system depends on
many variables, corrosion testing itself has many pitfalls.
• Corrosion tests are an important tool for a variety of industrial tasks that
can vary greatly over the life of a system.
• A decision that makes economic sense at design time may not make any
sense by the time the same system is in its 20th year of operation.
• In some process applications, the materials selected may have been the
optimum choice for the initial operating conditions.

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Introduction
• However, unintended minor changes in the operating conditions can
easily increase the corrosivity of a process.
• For tests to yield meaningful results, knowledge of the environment
that exists under actual service conditions is necessary.
• Quite often the water quality within a plant, under normal operating
conditions, differs significantly from that at the intake to the plant.
• In order to conduct realistic corrosion tests, these variations must be
taken into account.

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Factors Should be Considered
• When an experiment or test is planned, many factors have to be
considered. The following list enumerates some of the most standard
considerations for the design of a test program:
What are the objectives of the test?
How should the results be interpreted?
 How can the information be integrated with earlier or other tests?
 How many specimens are available, and what is their production
schedule (batch, sequential)?

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Factors Should be Considered
How many factors control the specimen’s behaviour?
 How many factors are to be included in the tests?
 Which of these factors interact and which have negligible
interaction?
 What type of data are to be measured?
 Is the sample homogeneous?
 How representative is the sample?
 Are the tests destructive?
 How expensive are the tests and/or specimens?
How much control is there over testing?
How difficult would it be to include human errors of different kinds in
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Tests Standards
• There is a multitude of organizations around the world dealing with
the production of test methods and standards related to the overall
behavior and performance of materials.
• Organized in 1898, the American Society for Testing and Materials
(ASTM) has grown into one of the largest institutions of this kind.
• There are 132 ASTM main technical committees, and each is divided
into subcommittees. The subcommittee is the primary unit in this
organization, as it comprises the highest degree of expertise in any
given area.
• Subcommittees are further subdivided into task groups. Committee
G-1, Corrosion of Metals, is thus subdivided into; atmospheric
corrosion, computer in corrosion, etc.
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Classification
1. Laboratory tests.
2. Pilot-plant or semi works tests.
3. Plant or actual service tests.
4. Field tests.

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Laboratory Tests
• Many of these tests are routinely performed to provide information
on:
Fundamental corrosion evaluation
Failure analysis
Corrosion prevention and control
Acceptance of quality assurance
Environmental issues involving corrosion
New alloy/nonmetallic or product process development

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Laboratory Tests
• These kind of tests are characterized by small specimens and small volumes
of solutions.
• laboratory tests have proven to be the most reliable and simple mean to
generate information for the selection of process materials.
• Laboratory tests classified to the following tests:
1. Electrochemical
2. Cabinet
3. Immersion
4. High temperature
5. High pressure testing

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Laboratory Tests

• Electrochemical tests: can directly amplify the impact of corrosion

processes. The main reason why this is
• possible is that all electrochemical tests use some fundamental model of
the electrode kinetics associated with corrosion processes to quantify
corrosion rates.
• The amplification of the electrical signals generated during these tests has
permitted very precise and sensitive measurements to be carried out.
• Electrochemical testing methods involve the determination of specific
interface properties that can be divided into three broad categories: p531

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Laboratory Tests
• Cabinet testing: refers to tests conducted in closed cabinets where
the conditions of exposure are controlled and mostly designed to
accelerate specific corrosion situations while trying to emulate as
closely as possible the corrosion mechanisms at play.
• Cabinet tests are generally used to determine the corrosion
performance of materials intended for use in natural atmospheres.

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Laboratory Tests
• Immersion testing: the environmental conditions that must be
simulated and the degree of acceleration that is required often
determine the choice of a laboratory test.
• Once the environmental conditions have been determined and the
test designed, the test should be repeated a sufficient number of
times to determine whether it meets the desired standard for
reproducibility.

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Laboratory Tests
• High-temperature/high-pressure (HT/HP) testing: autoclave
corrosion tests are a convenient means for laboratory simulation of
many service environments.
• The reason for such tests is to recreate the high temperatures and
pressures commonly occurring in commercial or industrial processes.
Factors affecting corrosion behaviour are often intimately linked to
the conditions of total system pressure, partial pressures of various
soluble gaseous constituents, and temperature.

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Pilot-plant or semi works tests
• These test are usually the best and the most desirable.
• Tests are made in small scale plant that essentially duplicates the
intended large scale operation.
• Pilot plants are usually run long enough to ensure good results.
• The only disadvantages is that conditions of operation may be widely
varied in attempting to determine optimum operation.

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Service Tests
• Involves in a particular service or a given plant.
• Service tests can be classified to:
1. Industrial applications.
2. High – temperature.

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Field Tests
• Involves field tests designed to obtain more general information. Field
tests are classified to:
1. Atmospheric
2. Seawater
3. Freshwater
4. soils

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Purposes
• Main justification for corrosion testing

For material selection in a specific environment or in certain

application.
Evaluation of new or old metals or alloys to determine the
environments in which they are suitable.
Control the resistance corrosion of materials or corrosiveness of the
environment.
For the research analysis and development purposes.

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Materials and Specimens
• First step in corrosion testing concerns the specimens themselves.
• If compete information on the materials is not known, the data
obtained be practically useless.
• If particular shapes are involved, representative material should be
tested.

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Size and Shapes of Specimen
• Usually preffered to use flat samples for ease handling and surface
preparations.
• Specimen size inches (1/16 to ¼ thickness, 1 width, 2 long) are widely
used in laboratories tests.
• For wrought speciemen a large ratio of rolled area is desirable.
• The reason of using thin specimen is that the cut edge might
corroded twice as fast as the rolled surface, so the results cause
misleading.

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Small Specimens
• Small samples permit more accurate weighing and measuring of
dimensions.
• Short time tests.
• Low corrosion rate.

Large Samples
• The large samples are proffered when studying pitting corrosion
because of the involvement of probability factor.

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Surface Preparation
• The surface of the specimen should be identical with the actual
surface of the equipment in the real plant.
• The best surface finish is produced by polishing with No. 120 abrasive
cloth or paper, or equivalent. Which is commonly used in the tsts and
preferred.
• Just be aware , this surface is not smooth neither rough.
• Avoid excessive heating of the specimen, a good rule is that the
specimen could be held by naked hand at all time.

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Surface Preparation
• The edges must be machined, filed or ground to removebe finshed as
the rest of the specimen.
• Rubbing with a hard eraser for soft metals like lead is recommended
to obtain a bright surface.
• Scrubbing with pumice powder and other fine abrasives is sometimes
used on magnesium and aluminium and their alloys.

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Consideration on Exposure Techniques
• The corrosive should have easy access to the specimen.
• The support should not fail during the testing process.
• Specimens should not be contacted with another metal and
electrically isolated.
• Specimen should be properly positioned.
• For plants test, the specimens should be as readily accessible as
possible.

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