Corrosion Analysis- Metallurgical Evaluation

To help you find the exact protocol required for your project or compliance standard, our testing catalog is organized into four core engineering categories:

1. Uniform & Localized Material Loss Tests

• General Corrosion Testing: Measures uniform material loss across an entire metallic surface over a specified timeframe to establish baseline environmental degradation rates.
• Pitting Corrosion Testing: Evaluates a material’s vulnerability to highly destructive, localized attacks that form deep micro-cavities or holes at local anodic sites.
• Laboratory Immersion Testing: Immerses material coupons in customized solution matrices that accurately mimic the real-world chemistry your product will face, allowing for direct material-to-material comparison.
• Heat & Fluid Aging: Subjects materials to simultaneous high temperatures and aggressive fluids to simulate accelerated, long-term environmental lifecycle exposure.

2. Advanced Electrochemical Analysis

• Electrochemical Corrosion Testing: Evaluates real-time corrosion kinetics by analyzing a material's electrical behavior in simulated operational fluids.
• Potentiodynamic Polarization Testing: Varies the potential difference over time between the sample and a reference electrode. By plotting the resulting data on a polarization curve, we precisely calculate corrosion potential and current density to compare corrosion mitigation methods.

3. Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) & Environmental Stress Tests

• Susceptibility to Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC): Evaluates a material's structural limits when simultaneously subjected to tensile load and a corrosive environment, a critical test for copper and high-strength alloys.
• Environmental Stress Cracking (ESC): Analyzes non-metallic or composite vulnerabilities under combined mechanical stress and chemical exposure.
• Slow Strain Rate Testing (SSRT): Applies a continuous, ultra-slow tensile deformation rate (typically 0.05 to 0.5 mm/min) within a corrosive environment to monitor rapid crack evolution.
• Stress-Corrosion of Titanium Alloys: Maps environmental cracking thresholds in titanium subjected to saltwater or acidic environments, helping determine the critical stress intensity factor ($K_{ISCC}$).
• U-Bend Sample Preparation: We precisely bend and fixture metal specimens into a self-stressed "U" shape prior to chemical immersion to evaluate localized stress-corrosion cracking performance.

4. Specialty Alloys & Industry-Specific Standards

• Sensitization Testing (Stainless Steel): Assesses stainless steels for intergranular corrosion (IGC) and stress cracking caused by chromium carbide precipitation at grain boundaries during improper heat treatment.
• Passivation Testing for Medical Devices: Validates the effectiveness of surface passivation treatments on medical components (e.g., using saline exposures) to ensure implants will not degrade inside the human body.
• Galvanic Corrosion of Medical Implants: Evaluates the safety and electrochemical interactions of dissimilar metals in direct contact within an electrolyte solution, such as bodily fluids.
• Dezincification (Australian Standard): Evaluates the selective dealloying resistance of brass components to prevent zinc leaching and structural sponginess.
• Formicary (Ant’s Nest) Corrosion: Specializes in identifying organic-compound-driven, microscopic tunneling corrosion within copper HVAC and plumbing tubes.
• Mercurous Nitrate Testing: Exposes copper alloys to mercurous nitrate solutions to rapidly detect internal residual stresses via accelerated mercury-based cracking.
• Moist Ammonia Vapor Testing: An accelerated corrosion standard used to evaluate copper alloy vulnerability to ammonia-induced stress corrosion cracking.