Stress Corrosion Cracking

Metal Improvement Company’s (MIC) processes are widely used in the chemical processing industry to solve the problems of stress corrosion cracking, corrosion fatigue, fatigue, intergranular corrosion, and galling.

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is thought to be the most frequent cause of failures in chemical processing equipment.

Shot peening is usually performed on components following original manufacture but can also be used to increase the time between maintenance intervals for equipment in use.  It can also be applied to welded joints to reduce or eliminate SCC replacing the tensile stress on the surface with beneficial compressive stress.

The process of Shot Peening has been used as a cost savings measure for the construction of chemical handling equipment. In cases where ammonia or chloride based solutions are contained, lower cost material combined with Shot Peening has proved to be more cost effective than using a more expensive higher quality alloy.

MIC also provides a range of coatings which provide chemical/corrosion resistance and wear protection such as:

• Expoxies
• Phenolics
• Fluoropolymers (PVDF/ECTFE)
• Nylon
• Ceramometallic Hybrid Coatings

MIC offers on-site processing worldwide which is ideally suited to the needs of the chemical processing and associated processing industries.

Applications

• HAZ
• Welded structures and pipelines
• Pressure vessels
• Storage vessels
• Valves