Corrosion

Corrosion, the environmental degradation of materials, is a major area of research in materials science and engineering. It is estimated that corrosion costs U.S. households, businesses and government agencies more than $400 billion dollars a year. In the MSE department, research conducted at the Fontana Corrosion Center (FCC) focuses on the study of aqueous corrosion in our effort to develop better methods to protect materials from the adverse impacts of the environment.

Topics of research at the FCC, which has earned an international reputation for excellence, include:

Mechanisms of localized corrosion: pitting, intergranular, exfoliation, and crevice corrosion
Environment assisted cracking: stress corrosion cracking and corrosion fatigue
Fundamental studies of corrosion inhibition
Development of environmentally-friendly protective coating systems
Atmospheric corrosion
First principles atomistic modeling
Galvanic corrosion
Design of corrosion resistant alloys
Studies of coating adhesion and degradation
Predictive modeling of corrosion damage accumulation
Novel applications of scanning probe microscopy to corrosion
Corrosion and cracking of steel and H2S-containing environments
Corrosion and cracking of nuclear waste forms and canisters