Services
What we are asked to do
Six areas cover almost all of our work. They overlap more often than not: a failure investigation usually ends in a material selection question, and a material selection question usually ends in a coating specification.
Failure investigation
Metallurgical examination of failed components: visual and stereo examination, sectioning, optical microscopy, hardness traverses and fractography, correlated with service history and operating data. The deliverable is a mechanism, a cause, and a recommendation that can be acted on.
Material selection review
Independent assessment of proposed alloys and grades against the actual service environment: temperature, chloride and oxygen levels, pH, flow velocity, and the realistic upset conditions rather than only the design case.
Coating specification and audit
Preparation of protective coating specifications to ISO 12944, including surface preparation grade, system build and inspection hold points; and third-party audit of applied work against the specification that was actually issued.
Cathodic protection design review
Current demand calculations, anode sizing and distribution, and review of survey data for buried and immersed structures. We review designs; we do not sell hardware.
Corrosion monitoring programmes
Design of monitoring strategies using coupons, electrical resistance probes and inspection data, with a defined interpretation procedure so that readings lead to decisions.
Specification and standards support
Drafting and review of material and fabrication requirements for procurement documents, and technical support during vendor clarification and deviation requests.
How an investigation runs
A typical failure investigation takes three to five weeks from receipt of the component. We agree the scope and the questions to be answered before any destructive work begins, because sectioning decisions cannot be undone and are frequently disputed later.
The report states the mechanism, the evidence for it, the contributing factors, and the remedial options with their trade-offs. Where the evidence does not support a single conclusion, the report says so and sets out what further work would resolve it. We would rather deliver an honest uncertainty than a confident answer that does not survive scrutiny.