Master of Engineering (MEng)

MEng Materials Science and Engineering

Exploiting the full potential of new materials, you can tackle some of greatest challenges facing the planet.

  • Duration: 4 years (or 5 years including a year in industry)
  • Year of entry: 2027
  • UCAS course code: J501 / Institution code: M20
  • Key features:
  • Scholarships available
  • Accredited course

Full entry requirementsHow to apply

Course unit details:
Corrosion Control for Industrial Practice

Course unit fact file
Unit code MATS43502
Credit rating 15
Unit level Level 7
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Offered by Department of Materials
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

This unit provides students with an understanding of the key corrosion processes and mechanisms of preventing these for the Process and Power industries, covering topics such as high temperature corrosion and moving on to environmentally induced cracking and localised corrosion. The unit shows students how these modes of failure might be encountered in industrial and power plant environments. The corrosion risks for combinations of engineering materials and environments including humid air, steam, hot water, acids, and alkalis are presented and discussed. The cross cutting themes are the prediction of corrosion risks in the different environments, the use of design and materials selection to minimise the probability of corrosion failures, and to encourage an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the different corrosion control strategies available.

A final set of lectures considers how corrosion data is used to by engineers from other disciplines, and shows how information from corrosion engineers is used in Failure Assessment Diagrams, where both structural engineering concepts and information on rates of degradation of structures can be integrated to provide robust techniques to assess the integrity and lifetimes of industrial plant and equipment.

Aims

To enable to students to understand the corrosion challenges faced by the Process and Power Industries.

  • To enable students to understand how materials selection and the design and use of countermeasures to combat corrosion are commonly used in industry.
  • To ensure students understand the specific corrosion challenges in cooling and steam raising equipment.
  • To enable students to use the R6 Failure Assessment Diagram framework to integrate data on corrosion risks with mechanical and structural design and assessment methods.

Learning outcomes

A greater depth of the learning outcomes will be covered in the following sections:

  • Knowledge and understanding
  • Intellectual skills
  • Practical skills
  • Transferable skills and personal qualities

Teaching and learning methods

The course is delivered via face-to-face activities supported by online teaching material and resources. This material was originally developed as an online version of the course, but now serves as a parallel resource for self-study and revision, with tests and other activities students may use.

There will be a formative online quiz for practise in the third week of teaching, followed by an assessed quiz activity after the fourth week of teaching (week 22). The final assessed coursework is a lab exercise, to examine Pitting Corrosion. This will be a group report.

Knowledge and understanding

  • Explain how the structure, thickness and composition of passive films develop on various metallic materials and interpret their importance on localized corrosion and environmentally assisted fracture. Quantify the relationship between pitting and crevice corrosion, and relate this to the effects of depositsEvaluate the corrosion behaviour of structural alloys in hot water, acids, alkalis and salts using science based corrosion maps. Draw diagrams and use appropriate equations illustrating the different factors that affect corrosion rate.
  • Recognise the main forms of environmentally assisted fracture (including stress corrosion cracking, hydrogen embrittlement and corrosion fatigue) occurring in industrial processes and energy systems. Identify suitable testing methods and mitigation applied to materials commonly used for structural applications.
  • Explain the factors that affect the high-temperature oxidation behaviour of structural alloys in industrial environments, including gas turbines, power plants, heat exchangers and thermal energy storage plants.
  • Describe the mechanisms of carburization and metal dusting, identify associated product morphologies and propose potential protection strategies. Compare the corrosion kinetics and product characteristics of oxidation and sulphidation reactions. Evaluate the factors that affect molten-salt corrosion processes and account for the reaction kinetics. 

Intellectual skills

  • Explain both general and localised corrosion/damage processes and the reasons for these occurring in industrial processes.
  • Evaluate high-temperature corrosion and oxidation processes on metallic systems, and determine how the environmental degradation might affect performance in service.
  • Relate how material degradation mechanisms can affect component life-time behaviour. Gain an appreciation of the influence of different types of environment on corrosion/oxidation processes.
  • Apply management of corrosion by design, material fabrication and materials selection to optimize materials performance in energy systems. 

Practical skills

  • Apply electrochemical equipment to evaluate the localised corrosion resistance of structural alloys as a function of their environment.
  • Explore and analyse the different forms of material degradation.

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  • Justify technical arguments in a clear fashion.
  • Use appropriate vocabulary to answer technical questions and prepare laboratory reports.
  • Operate as an effective team member.

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written exam 70%
Written assignment (inc essay) 30%

Feedback methods

Written and verbal

Recommended reading

General texts are listed in the reading list for unit MATS66301. More specialist topics are covered in this unit, but many of these works are also useful for this unit.
 
Shreir's Corrosion, Four-Volume - 2009 by Tony Richardson (Author), Tony J.A. Richardson (Editor), Bob R A Cottis (Editor) https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780444527875/shreirs-corrosion

Electrocorrosion and Protection of Metals General approach with particular consideration to electrochemical plants

Joseph Riskin

Burlington : Elsevier Science 2008

Online access available
 

Corrosion and Chemical Resistant Masonry Materials Handbook

William Andrew Publishing/Noyes 1986

Online access available
 

Understanding how components fail / Donald J. Wulpi.

Donald J. Wulpi author. Brett Miller Metallurgical engineer, editor.

Materials Park, Ohio : ASM International, Third edition / edited by Brett Miller. 2013]

Online access available
 

Materials selection deskbook / by Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff.

Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff

Westwood, N.J. : Noyes Publications ©1996

Online access available
 

Handbook of environmental degradation of materials / edited by Myer Kutz.

Myer Kutz

Waltham, MA : William Andrew 2nd ed. 2013

Online access available
 

Environmentally assisted cracking : predictive methods for risk assessment and evaluation of materials, equipment, and structures / Russell D. Kane, editor.

R. D Kane

W. Conshohocken, PA : ASTM 2000

Available at Joule Library Main Level (620.182 KAN )
 

Treatment of Cooling Water / by Aquaprox.

Aquaprox. author. SpringerLink (Online service)

Springer eBooks

Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009

Online access available
 

Selection and use of engineering materials.

J. Charles F. A. A Crane (Frederick Albert Andrew), 1927-1984.; J. A. G Furness

Oxford : Butterworth-Heinemann 3rd ed. / J.A. Charles, F.A.A. Crane, J.A.G. Furness. 1997

Online access available. The library also has physical copies.
 

Materials for Nuclear Plants From Safe Design to Residual Life Assessments / by Wolfgang Hoffelner.

Wolfgang Hoffelner author. SpringerLink (Online service)

Springer eBooks

London : Springer London : Imprint: Springer, 2013

Online access available

For Information and advice on Link2Lists reading list software, see:

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/academicsupport/informationandadviceonlink2listsreadinglistsoftware/

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 30
Tutorials 3
Independent study hours
Independent study 117

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Xiaorong Zhou Unit coordinator

Fees and funding

Fees

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2027 will be £10,050 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £41,900 per annum.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

Policy on additional costs

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

Scholarships/sponsorships

The University of Manchester is committed to attracting and supporting the very best students. We have a focus on nurturing talent and ability and we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to study here, regardless of your financial circumstances.

For information about scholarships and bursaries please visit our undergraduate student finance pages and our the Department funding pages.

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