Different types of material failure, like corrosion or embrittlement, in harsh environment leads to around £2.1 trillion in damage to global gross domestic product every year.

Owing to an unstable global economy, the use of suitable alloys to minimise failure in these environments has never been more important. Here, Copper Alloys’ Engineering Director Scott Pears looks at the importance of understanding material failure and how metallurgical advances help to prolong the life of harsh environment components.

Materials used in environments where demands are high are liable to a variety of issues causing component degradation. Seawater, extreme temperatures, exposure to chemicals and high stress can all combine to cause rapid and unexpected material failure.

The extensive demands of harsh environments make the performance of standard metals limited. In helping prolong the lifespan of components, custom-made metal manufacturers look to understand the entirety of each environment’s demands.

Why choose custom alloys in demanding environments

In understanding the strains and using metals developed specifically for environmental demands, many associated issues with material failure can be removed, aiding profitability and boosting operation integrity. But, how?

Investing in custom metals leads to the reduction or removal of many time-consuming and costly problems. If an application is made using a standard alloy, with no customised composition or properties, the chance of failure in a critical piece of equipment may be vastly increased. For example, on an oil rig where chemical exposure and seawater exposure are both high, this unplanned downtime can cause financial losses for a company looking to maximise its production capacity.

Even with planned downtime, operators want to keep downtime to an absolute minimum in order to run training sessions on machinery or to provide essential maintenance on components, for example. During planned downtime, design engineers can run tests on critical components to manage failure risks. Minimising these risks help design engineers to conduct timely tests before giving the ‘safe’ message to resume operations.

If someone spots a component which needs replacing, there are a myriad of issues associated with this replacement process. Not only does the operational pauses cost money itself, but the cost of filing through new critical components can become high.

Having the chance to specify desired properties based on a wish list of properties, means operators can improve their manufacturing processes and hardware assets across the board.

Organisational benefits of using alloys in operations

As mentioned, the operational benefits of custom alloy usage can help to maximise efficiency and reduce unnecessary costs. But what does this mean for organisations?

Building a reputation based on maximised operational efficiency directly causes a positive improvement in brand reliance. Using innovative material technology only helps to stay ahead of a development curve leading to maximising integrity and a knowledge that the supply chain is moving as smoothly as possible.

With more profitable procedures and smoother working methods, the time that would be spent managing unplanned downtime can be reallocated. The moving of time and resource into research and development capacity can be a smart play in the advancement of technology. In turn this brings cutting-edge products and services further down your supply chain.

For not-for-profit organisations such as navies this can be invaluable.

Solving the need for customised alloy properties in marine defence components

Components used in submarines within demanding sub-sea sectors may require fully customised alloy profiles made of multi-variable metallurgical traits, for example, high impact toughness, corrosion resistance and strength while having minimal conductivity.

This is only achievable with tailored materials; standard metals are limited in scope and rarely offer customised properties. Applying this level of profile alteration lets marine defence components within the same application have unique properties. The components on the outside of a submarine likely require more corrosion resistance while the inside might need more shock resistance. Custom materials make this possible.

Designed as a replacement alloy for use in a range of subsea environments, the use of copper-nickel-chrome alloys (CNC) is quickly becoming the go-to choice for marine-based design engineers.

CNC alloys are a step forward in metallurgy thanks to an outstanding toughness of 100J higher than the alloy it replaced, nickel aluminium bronze (NAB). Aside from toughness, CNC has a considerably longer selective phase corrosion (SPC) with NAB corroding at a rate of 1.4mm per year. CNC alloys can last a lifetime and, in many cases, are fit to be recommissioned thus helping to further reduce the cost of metal waste.

It is imperative to understand the requirement of a component and the demand of its respective environment. Bespoke materials bring a unique solution to one of the most demanding metallurgical questions: “how do we reduce the annual £2.1 trillion worth of damage seen to metals in harsh environments?”