Boilers are engineered systems designed to convert the chemical energy in fuel into heat to generate hot water or steam. This chapter describes boiler applications and types, including firetube boilers, watertube boilers, electric boilers, packaged boilers, fluidized bed combustion boilers, oil- and gas-fired boilers, waste heat boilers, and black liquor recovery boilers. It also describes the operation and working principle of utility or power plant boilers, covering conventional subcritical and advanced supercritical types.

This chapter describes the applications with the greatest impact on titanium consumption and global market trends. It explains where, how, and why titanium alloys are used in aerospace, automotive, chemical processing, medical, and military applications as well as power generating equipment, sporting goods, oil and gas production, and marine vessels.

Induction heating has found widespread use as a method to raise the temperature of a metal prior to forming or joining, or to change its metallurgical structure. However, induction heating has specialized capabilities that make it suitable for applications outside of metal treatment and fabrication. This chapter summarizes some of the special applications of induction heating, including those in the plastics, packaging, electronics, glass, chemical, and metal-finishing industries. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the application of induction heating for vacuum processes.

Besides the induction coil and workpiece, the induction generator (source of ac power) is probably the most important component of an overall induction heating system. Such equipment is typically rated in terms of its frequency and maximum output power (in kilowatts). This chapter addresses the selection of power supplies in terms of these two factors as well as the operational features of different types of sources. The six different types of power supplies for induction heating applications covered in this chapter are line-frequency supplies, frequency multipliers, motor-generators, solid-state (static) inverters, spark-gap converters, and radio-frequency power supplies. The chapter discusses the design and characteristics of each of the various types of power supplies.

Coil design for induction heating has been developed and refined over time based on the theoretical principles applied in practice to several simple inductor geometries such as the classical solenoidal coil. This chapter reviews the fundamental considerations in the design of inductors and describes some of the most widely used coils and common design modifications. Specialty coil designs for specific applications are also discussed. The chapter concludes with sections devoted to coil fabrication and design of power-supply leads.

This chapter discusses the basic components in an induction heat treating system. It describes the design and operating characteristics of power supplies, load-matching transformers, tuning capacitors, power regulators, controllers, process monitors, and diagnostic systems. It also provides information on fixtures and work-handling devices, quench systems, and load matching and tuning procedures.

This appendix provides a list of books and technical papers utilized as reference material during the development of this book.

This chapter discusses the selection, use, and integration of methods to control process variables in induction heating, including control of workpiece and processing temperature and materials handling systems. The discussion of temperature control includes a review of proportional controllers and heat-regulating devices. Integration of control functions is illustrated with examples related to heating of steel slabs, surface hardening of steel parts, vacuum induction melting for casting operations, and process optimization for electric-demand control. Distributed control within larger manufacturing systems is discussed. The chapter also covers nondestructive techniques for process control and methods for process simulation.

This chapter surveys both basic quality and basic reliability concepts as an introduction to the failure analysis professional. It begins with a section describing the distinction between quality and reliability and moves on to provide an overview of the concept of experiment design along with an example. The chapter then discusses the purposes of reliability engineering and introduces four basic statistical distribution functions useful in reliability engineering, namely normal, lognormal, exponential, and Weibull. It also provides information on three fundamental acceleration models used by reliability engineers: Arrhenius, Eyring, and power law models. The chapter concludes with information on failure rates and mechanisms and the two techniques for uncovering reliability issues, namely burn-in and outlier screening.

This chapter focuses on the transfer of energy between the power supply and the induction heating coil. The most efficient transfer requires that the induction heated load and coil be matched to the power supply and that the electrical circuit containing these elements be properly tuned. The chapter describes these procedures, including the processes involved in tuning induction heating circuits and load matching, impedance matching by means of a transformer, and tuning used for specific types of power supplies.

This chapter provides a discussion on the power supplies of modern induction heating plants. It describes the mode of operation and functional principle of an inverter. The chapter also provides a short note on generator cooling, which is required for the components of the induction power supply. It then presents an overview of induction heating systems.

Electromagnetic induction, or simply "induction," is a method of heating electrically conductive materials such as metals. It is commonly used for heating workpieces prior to metalworking and in heat treating, welding, and melting. This technique also lends itself to various other applications involving packaging and curing of resins and coatings. This chapter provides a brief review of the history of induction heating and discusses its applications and advantages.

This article describes in detail the process of corrosion control by cathodic and anodic protection. The discussion covers the basic concept of cathodic and anodic protection systems, their types and equipment used, and the advantages, limitations, and applications of these protection systems. The types of cathodic protection systems include sacrificial cathodic protection and impressed-current cathodic protection systems. Some of the technical problems associated with cathodic protection include the effects of stray currents on the corrosion of adjacent metal structures, the effects of the chemical reactions occurring at the surface of the protected structure, and the effects of cathodic protection on coatings.

A large portion of cast and wrought product production is directed to the ground transportation market. Aluminum castings, extrusions, forgings, and rolled products all find wide application for trucks, trains, subways, and buses and are discussed in this chapter.

After pouring, castings are allowed to solidify and cool. They are later removed from the molds in the shakeout operation. A series of activities then follow, which are generally referred to as finishing and heat treatment. These activities can be broadly categorized as shakeout, abrasive blast cleaning, removal of risers, ingates, and discontinuities, rough inspection, removal of discontinuities, finishing welding, heat treatment, and final visual, dimensional, and NDT inspection. This chapter provides a detailed discussion on these activities.

Fireside corrosion can be a serious problem in oil-fired boilers and in refinery furnaces fired with low-grade fuels. This chapter provides an overview of fireside or oil-ash corrosion and the problems it can cause in utility power boilers and petrochemical refinery furnaces. It explains how oil-ash corrosion affects waterwalls, superheaters, and reheaters as well as metal tube supports and hangers.

This chapter covers the basics of weldability of cast steels such as carbon and low alloy steels, corrosion-resistant high alloy steels, nickel-base alloys, heat-resistant high alloy steels, and wear-resistant high austenitic manganese steels. It provides an overview of weld overlay and hard facing; cast-weld construction; and plasma arc cutting and plasma arc welding. The chapter discusses different types of welding processes. These include shielded metal-arc welding, air carbon arc cutting process, gas tungsten-arc welding, gas metal-arc welding process, flux-cored arc welding, submerged arc welding, and electroslag and electro-gas welding.

To a large extent, the induction coil and its coupling to the workpiece determine the precise heating pattern that is developed. However, it is often desirable to modify this pattern in order to produce a special heating distribution or to increase energy efficiency. At other times, the high heating rates of induction are needed for processing nonconductors. This chapter describes broad methods of accomplishing such objectives: modification of the field of magnetic induction, use of devices to prevent auxiliary equipment or certain portions of a workpiece from being heated, and techniques to apply heating to electrically nonconductive materials. These methods make use of devices such as flux concentrators, shields, and susceptors. The chapter provides a description of the materials for these devices and guidelines for their application.

Increasing the efficiency of power plants by operating at higher temperatures and pressures and adding a double-reheat feature comes at the expense of shortened lifetimes for critical components. This chapter provides an overview of the material-related problems associated with advanced steam plants and their respective solutions. The discussion covers the selection of materials on a component-specific basis for boilers as well as steam turbines.

Molybdenum thermal spray coatings are used in aerospace and other industries for wear resistance applications. Metallographic sample preparation of molybdenum coatings presents unique challenges. The purpose of the investigation described in this article is to determine Accepted Practices for sample preparation to better understand the process related microstructures of thermal spray molybdenum powders. The committee followed a round robin approach to assess metallographic sample preparation by a variety of laboratories. The article summarizes the results of the committee’s work.