Galvanic Corrosion - Some Observations From the Field

Part of any structural design process is selecting the material to build your structure from. This is an optimisation process, where you choose the materials based on their strength, ease of fabrication, durability, cost and other factors. Something that often gets overlooked in this process however is the potential for galvanic corrosion.

In mining, corrosive environments are common. Large amounts of water are used, and water is often contaminated with corrosive chemicals, and spillage of fine product holds moisture against steelwork (rather than letting it evaporate). Once mined, the product has to go somewhere, often to a port in a marine environment (plenty of salt!).

Some Effects of Local Corrosion

A common issue that I see in my role as a structural engineer is corrosion (and lots of it!). After finding some corrosion, I’m often asked: “how much strength has been lost”?

Sometimes the answer is obvious:

What They Didn't Teach Me at University - Stiffness Part 2

In my last post I began by saying that I felt that I had missed out on the importance of stiffness in structural engineering while I was at University. I also gave an example of where considering the stiffness of a structure’s supports had been a useful tool. In this post I want to continue with another example where the stiffness of the structure itself (not the supports) was important.