ScienceDirect.com publishes a new « Case Studies in Engineering Failure Analysis« .

A failure incident of heat-exchange tubes in ammonia evaporators, which suffered from unexpected wall thinning after only one-year service with respect to their original design lifetime of fifteen years, was reported and carefully analyzed. The analysis results demonstrated that the unexpected wall thinning of tubes was primarily ascribed to multiple corrosion factors including uniform corrosion, pitting and interaction behavior between them. Relative failure mechanisms were discussed in detail and prevention measures were also proposed for ammonia evaporators under similar operating condition.