Presented at the Corrosion Conference & Expo, March 26-30, 2017.
Authors: Pradip Khaladkar, PECT and Geoff Clarkson, UTComp
Summary: Fiberglass reinforced plastic materials are well suited to a wide variety of chemical handling equipment where resistance to corrosion is required. A significant impediment to adoption of these materials for many suitable applications lies with the inability to do a fitness for service determination after the equipment and piping have been in service. This is largely due to the lack of effective non-destructive
and non-intrusive techniques for plastic materials. This paper presents a case study of a fiberglass
reinforced plastic scrubber which was evaluated with a novel ultrasonic technique followed by a
destructive evaluation for retained mechanical properties and corrosion barrier condition. When
compared, the results showed good correlation. Although the FRP unit was already discarded this
study indicated that significant life had still remained.
Also see another paper on the same topic delivered at CorCon 2016 Corrosion Conference & Expo, Sept. 18-21, 2016.