Leaks can occur as the result of several failure causes. This chapter reviews the causes, features, and impact of various types of leaks, namely gasket leaks, O-ring leaks, bond-joint leaks, weld leaks, polyvinyl chloride leaks, valve leaks, and structural leaks.

This chapter provides a discussion of nitriding furnace equipment and control systems. The discussion covers the essential design criteria of the furnace, types of nitriding furnaces, insulation for the reduction of furnace heat losses, and factors influencing furnace configuration and design. It also covers the processes involved in the construction and maintenance of retorts, methods for sealing a retort to prevent ammonia leaks, and safety precautions to be taken while using ammonia. Further, the chapter provides information on the factors for choosing a heating medium and discusses the processes involved in controlling temperature, gas dissociation, oxygen probes, and nitriding sensors.

This chapter discusses the growing use of sintered stainless steels in automotive applications and various types of filters and filtering media. It also describes how these materials are produced in the form of metal foams and cellular structures and how they serve as flake pigments in corrosion-resistant coatings.

This chapter discusses the design and operation of hydraulic presses. It begins by describing the role of each major component in a hydraulic system. It then explains the difference between pump-driven and accumulator-driven presses and the types of applications for which are suited. The chapter goes on to describe the load, energy, and time-dependent characteristics of hydraulic presses and the factors that determine accuracy. It also explains how hydraulic presses are used for deep drawing, fine blanking, and hydroforming as well as warm forming and hot stamping operations.

This chapter discusses the maintenance needs of major components in induction heat-treating systems, including power supplies, heat stations, capacitors, high-frequency output stages, induction coils, water systems, quench systems, and fixturing.

This chapter presents the criteria, methods, and benefits of cast-weld construction.

This chapter describes issues related to corrosion of carbon steel weldments and remedial measures that have proven successful in specific cases. The forms of corrosion covered includes preferential heat affected zone corrosion, preferential weld metal corrosion, and galvanic corrosion. Industrial case studies demonstrating the necessity for testing each galvanic couple in the environment for which it is intended are presented. The chapter also discusses various factors associated with stress-corrosion cracking in oil refineries.

Distortion failures are readily identified by the inherent change in size and/or shape. They are serious because they can lead to other types of failure or may even cause complete collapse of structures, such as bridges, ladders, beams, and columns. Distortion failures may be classified in different ways. One way is to consider them either as dimensional distortion (growth or shrinkage) or as shape distortion (such as bending, twisting, or buckling). They may also be classified as being either temporary or permanent in nature. This chapter discusses the nature, causes, and effects of all of these types of failures as well as the methods to manage them.

The inspection of castings normally involves checking for shape and dimensions, coupled with aided and unaided visual inspection for external discontinuities and surface quality. This chapter discusses methods for determining surface quality, internal discontinuities, and dimensional inspection. Casting defects including porosity, oxide films, inclusions, hot tears, metal penetration, and surface defects are reviewed. Liquid penetrant inspection, magnetic particle inspection, eddy current inspection, radiographic inspection, ultrasonic inspection, and leak testing for castings are discussed. The chapter provides information on the procedures involved in the inspection of castings that are limited to visual and dimensional inspections, weight testing, and hardness testing. It also discusses the use of computer equipment in foundry inspection operations.

The die casting process is a widely applied technique used by a variety of industries. This chapter reviews the casting design and engineering requirements for optimizing the characteristics of die castings.

This article reviews the fundamental and specific factors that control the properties of steel weldments in both the weld metal and heat-affected zone (HAZ). The influence of welding processes, welding consumables, and welding parameters on the weldment properties is emphasized. The service properties of weldments in corrosive environments are considered and subjected to cyclic loading. The article summarizes the effects of major alloying elements in carbon and low-alloy steels on HAZ microstructure and toughness. It discusses the processes involved in controlling toughness in the HAZ and the selection of the proper filler metal. The article provides a comparison between single-pass and multipass welding and describes the effect of welding procedures on weldment properties and the effects of residual stresses on the service behavior of welded structures. It also describes the fatigue strength and fracture toughness of welded structures. The article reviews various types of corrosion of weldments.

Carbon and low-alloy steels are the most frequently welded metallic materials, and much of the welding metallurgy research has focused on this class of materials. Key metallurgical factors of interest include an understanding of the solidification of welds, microstructure of the weld and heat-affected zone (HAZ), solid-state phase transformations during welding, control of toughness in the HAZ, the effects of preheating and postweld heat treatment, and weld discontinuities. This chapter provides information on the classification of steels and the welding characteristics of each class. It describes the issues related to corrosion of carbon steel weldments and remedial measures that have proven successful in specific cases. The major forms of environmentally assisted cracking affecting weldment corrosion are covered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the effects of welding practice on weldment corrosion.

Casting is one of the basic processes used for the shaping of steel. It is economical in both cost and time of production. Numerous components are produced from cast steel because of the advantages of the process. These advantages can best be described under the following headings: design flexibility, metallurgical versatility and quality, and economic benefits. This chapter looks at these advantages of steel castings. Of major interest is the comparison of cast steel with wrought steel and weldments in terms of properties, availability, cost, and quality. The chapter also includes information on cast steel compared to other cast metals and other methods of steel fabrication.

This chapter discusses the advantages, limitations, and applications of various aluminum casting processes, namely green sand casting process, air set or no-bake molding process, vacuum molding process, evaporative foam casting process, and die casting process. The processes covered also include gravity permanent molding, low-pressure permanent molding, counter pressure, squeeze casting, investment casting, rapid prototype casting, cast forge hybrid, and semisolid metal processes.

This chapter describes a sheet metal forming method, called hydroforming, that uses pressurized liquid and a shaped punch or die. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches, the effect of process variations, and tooling modifications intended to reduce sheet bulging. It identifies the factors that influence part quality and explains how finite-element analysis can be used to optimize hydroforming operations. It also discusses the economics of sheet hydroforming and presents several application examples.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview over all phenomena related to Voltage Contrast (VC) mechanisms in SEM and FIB. The multiple advantages, possibilities, and limits of active and passive VC failure localization are systemized and discussed. The knowledge of all facts influencing the VC generation (capacitance, leakage, doping, and circuitry) is very helpful for successful failure localization.

This chapter presents the primary considerations and mechanisms for corrosion and how they are involved in the selection of materials for process equipment in petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants. In addition, specific information on mechanical properties, corrosion, sulfide stress cracking, hydrogen-induced cracking, stress-oriented hydrogen-induced cracking, hydrogen embrittlement cracking, stress-corrosion cracking, velocity-accelerated corrosion, erosion-corrosion, and corrosion control is provided.

This chapter discusses the particular corrosion problems encountered and the methods of control used in petroleum production and the storage and transportation of oil and gas up to the refinery. It begins by describing those aspects of corrosion that tend to be unique to corrosion as encountered in applications involving oil and gas exploration and production. This is followed by a section reviewing the methods of corrosion control, namely the proper selection of materials, protective coatings, cathodic protection systems, use of inhibitors, use of nonmetallic materials, and control of the environment. The chapter ends with a discussion on the problems encountered and protective measures that are based on the state-of-the-art as practiced daily by corrosion and petroleum engineers and production personnel.

This chapter provides an overview of the tools and techniques, as well as some of the underlying theory, that have proven useful for process modeling and simulation. It begins by presenting the framework of a thermoset cure model that accounts for kinetics, viscosity, heat transfer, flow, voids, and residual stress. It then discusses each variable in detail, explaining how it affects the cure process, how it is measured, and how it can be expressed mathematically in the form of a simple model. The discussions throughout the chapter are supported by numerous images, diagrams, and data plots.