Image credit: Merchant Navy Decoded — Propeller of Ship Walk along any harbor dry dock and you will notice that ship propellers almost always have between three and six blades, with four and five being the most common for merchant vessels. The blade count is… Read more
\; K_{ISCC} \] where \( \sigma \) is the applied stress, \( a \) is the crack depth, and \( Y \) is a geometry factor. Eyebar 330’s tiny 0.1-inch flaw sat below this threshold for decades, then crossed it after four decades of slow… Read more
By Tom Irvine | Structural Integrity Series — Gatwick Airport Railway Station, United Kingdom The photograph above was taken at Gatwick Airport Railway Station — the busiest airport rail station in the United Kingdom, serving both the Gatwick Express and Southern/Thameslink services with approximately 19… Read more
By Tom Irvine | Marine Corrosion Series — Madeira, Portugal (ISO 9223 Category C5) The photograph below was taken in Funchal, Madeira on 4 July 2026. It shows the corner bracket connection of a painted mild steel railing to a rendered concrete fascia on a… Read more
This is the second post in a series on marine corrosion observed at coastal infrastructure in Madeira, Portugal, July 2026. Part 1 covered a severely corroded bolt and nut at a seaside retaining wall. Here we examine two additional specimens from the same location: a… Read more
Photograph taken at a seaside retaining wall in Madeira, Portugal, July 2026. The bolt and nut shown are carbon steel — heavily corroded after prolonged exposure to the Atlantic marine environment.Figure 1. Severely corroded carbon steel bolt and nut at a seaside retaining wall, Madeira,… Read more
ZW12 (Mg–1Zn–2Y wt.%) is a research-stage magnesium alloy developed at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon (Geesthacht, Germany) targeting lightweight structural applications under cyclic loading. Recent work presented at IFC14 (14th International Fatigue Congress, 2026) by Trujillo-Tadeo et al. reveals that ZW12’s fatigue and corrosion-fatigue performance is strongly microstructure-dependent… Read more
intergranular SCC of an Inconel heat exchanger tube with the crack following the grain boundaries. photo courtesy Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a time-dependent fracture mechanism driven by the simultaneous presence of sustained tensile stress and a corrosive environment. Neither factor alone is sufficient. Their combination… Read more