Assessment of Corrosion Education (2009) / Chapter Skim
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2 An Assessment of Corrosion Education
2 An Assessment of Corrosion Education
Pages 31-62
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From page 31... ...
The workforce responsible for addressing the corrosion problems faced by both the government and private industry possesses various levels and types of corrosion engineering education. Corrosion technologists are needed to perform repeated crucial functions, such as those of paint inspectors and specifiers, cathodic protection designers, and installers.
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From page 32... ...
In the United States, corrosion technologists are often trained by supervising their performance of repeated and predictable corrosion tasks (on-the job training) or in conjunction with short courses or associate degrees offered by a limited number of community colleges.
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societies and private organizations offering in Technologist, plant/equipment inspector, house and extramural maintainer, manufacturer courses, online short courses, and skills training with certification Figure 2-1.eps FIGURE 2-1 Corrosion workforce pyramid. The pyramid shows the various categories of corrosion professionals and the knowledge they need -- from the large numbers of technologists and other professionals in engineering and related disciplines who would be aware of and knowledgeable about corrosion and its mitigation, the engineers who would be considered corrosion specialists, and a small number of corrosion scientists and corrosion engineers who are experts.
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From page 34... ...
• On-the-job training, continuing education through distance learning, and short courses to produce corrosion technologists, corrosion-aware engi neers, as well as corrosion specialists and experts, depending on the course and the starting knowledge of the student. Undergraduate Corrosion Education At workshops convened to gather information, the committee heard from p anelists representing various industrial and governmental sectors that their respec tive employee pools displayed very different levels of corrosion awareness.
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From page 35... ...
A typical modern class covers the fundamental thermodynamics and kinetics of corrosion, the eight forms of metallic corrosion (uniform, galvanic, crevice, pitting, intergranular, selective leaching, erosion corrosion, and stress corrosion) , the environmental degradation of nonmetals, and corrosion protection strategies such as coatings, inhibitors, and cathodic protection.
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Thermodynamics Review of free energy, activity Electrochemical free energy Standard potential Electromotive force series Simple electrochemical cells, cell potential, reaction direction, spontaneous reactions versus forced Nernst equation Effect of concentration on electrochemical cells Reference electrodes Pourbaix diagrams Oxygen reduction and evolution Water, proton, hydronium reduction, evolution, stable region of water Metal: passivity, immunity, corrosion Effect of other oxidizers: chlorine, peroxide, nitric acid Sample diagrams: Fe, Al, Cu, Cr diagrams Use of Pourbaix diagrams Estimated effect of alloying 3. Kinetics Driven and driving systems, electrode polarity Exchange current density Activation polarization, Butler Volmer equation Tafel equation Mixed potential theory: redox reaction, coupled reactions -- a corrosion cell, corrosion potential, and current density Simple Evans diagram Effect of added oxidizing agent Concentration polarization in learning practical skills, treats the eight forms of corrosion more descriptively, works with case studies, and teaches some design issues and corrosion remedia tion strategies.
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Pitting Crevice corrosion Intergranular corrosion Dealloying Environmentally assisted cracking Stress corrosion cracking Hydrogen effects Corrosion fatigue 6. Corrosion Prevention Materials selection, alloy corrosion characteristics Coatings Inhibitors Cathodic protection, sacrificial and impressed current Anodic protection 7.
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From page 38... ...
She or he is unlikely to be able to proactively address specific corrosion problems in design or independently analyze corrosion failures encountered on the job. Senior Design Course The third kind of course where a student might gain some corrosion awareness is the senior capstone or design course; here students are expected to synthesize the knowledge acquired in many different courses to tackle a particular design problem. For instance, such a course for a materials engineer would focus on the selection of materials appropriate for specific applications, so the student engineer would have to consider the impact of corrosion, along with other factors, on the Although the focus of this report is engineering education, the committee notes that often some electrochemistry and corrosion are taught in freshman chemistry classes.
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From page 39... ...
Discussion Unfortunately, while these three categories of corrosion education are available in some schools, many students, particularly those in fields of engineering other than materials, are likely to graduate with no formal exposure to corrosion science or engineering. This situation explains the limited corrosion-related skill sets that students are bringing to the workforce.
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From page 40... ...
Although 6 courses were identified as "required," only one program indicated that it required a corrosion class, along with two specializations within programs. Reasons cited for offering corrosion courses included student interest; the belief that it was essential for materials/metallurgical scientists and engineers to know about corrosion and important for many different careers; and employer demand.
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From page 41... ...
Because the lack of qualified instructors had been widely cited at workshops as a reason for not offering corrosion courses, the questionnaire asked whether the responding school would consider hiring a faculty member whose technical focus was corrosion. Fifty-eight percent of respondents replied that they would consider making such an appointment, while 42 percent would not.
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From page 42... ...
Figure 2-4 shows the availability of corrosion courses in the top 10 Ph.D-granting institutions and the top 10 4-year engineering colleges. Those schools offering a dedicated corrosion course reported that it was being taken by students from a wide range of engineering majors and by others as well,
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From page 43... ...
This suggests that there is, indeed, a demand from students for good, high-quality dedicated courses when they are offered by engaging faculty. At one school that emphasizes corrosion, the undergraduate corrosion course has been expanded to include corrosion batteries and fuel cells to attract students.
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Five departments taught corrosion as part of another required course, three taught it from the standpoint of materials section, and two had a focus on corrosion mechanisms. Only 1 of the 20 mechanical engineering departments requires a materials selection course and 3 required a corrosion course.
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Lower: Number of students from each major taking MSE 301 at the University of Virginia over a 3-year period and the percentage from each major taking that class.
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The employers appear to want all engineers making design and materials selection decisions to have enough exposure to corrosion to realize that they do not know enough about it to make the decision alone and that they need to consult a specialist.
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Because of ABET's approach, the committee spent some time developing educational outcomes for each of the many levels of education that might produce a worker in corrosion control (see Appendix F)
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Graduate Corrosion Education Graduate education in MSE is the most direct way to produce corrosion specialists, those at the top of the corrosion workforce pyramid. These corrosion specialists, in the committee's view, are the engineers who can use the fundamentals of corrosion science and engineering to address difficult, out-of-the-ordinary cor rosion problems and to advance the field by creating new knowledge, techniques, and instrumentation.
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Panelists from other sectors argued that although only a few corrosion experts are needed in a large company with hundreds of engineers, the experts are crucial nonetheless. A representative of another company argued that corrosion specialists must be capable of performing duties other than those related to Three credits entail 15-16 weeks of course delivery with 3 lecture hours a week in a school that operates on the semester system.
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From page 50... ...
In some cases the graduate-level class in corrosion has a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students and the class is taken by both advanced undergraduate students and new graduate students who might be matriculating from a school or program that did not offer an under graduate corrosion class. However, in other cases, separate sets of corrosion courses are offered to graduates and undergraduates.
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From page 51... ...
No matter the engineering field, if no faculty member conducts research in corrosion or a related field, a graduate corrosion course is unlikely to be offered. Since the conduct of research in corrosion is heavily contingent on the availability of research funding -- typically obtained through some combination of grants from the federal government and industry -- this factor can in effect dictate whether graduate students have a chance to study corrosion.
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In the best case, 1 in 20 of those professors in a mechanical engineering department might specialize in a field involving time-dependent materials properties, such as environmental degradation. Therefore, this country has about 60 mechanical engineering faculty capable of producing corrosion specialists.
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The committee does not know how many corrosion specialists who retire in the next 10 years will be replaced. There was anecdotal evidence that faculty in corrosion are sometimes not replaced when a position is vacated.
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Lower: Number of articles in the journals Corrosion and Corrosion Science written by authors at U.S. universities vs.
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database. SOURCE: Advanced Materials and Processes Technology Information Analysis Center (AMPTIAC)
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Since graduate schooling is the leading way to educate corrosion specialists and since graduate work is funded by research grants, it is reasonable to suppose that the supply of corrosion specialists is almost directly proportional to the number of grants and the total dollar value just as it is dependent on the number of faculty conducting corrosion research. To attract graduate students who eventually become corrosion specialists, university engineering programs offer graduate research assis tantships (GRAs)
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From page 57... ...
Such employers often hire capable bachelor's-level engineers who can gain further competence through on-the-job training in corrosion design, mitigation, prevention, and control, supplemented by continuing education as time and resources permit. This approach can help a company or government organization produce its own cadre of corrosion-knowledgeable engineers (and in some instances with further and more extensive knowledge-based education can even produce corrosion specialists)
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From page 58... ...
This segment of the workforce includes maintainers, technologists, and some procurement, production, and maintenance officials who require only minimal corrosion knowledge. For this segment, continuing education in the form of informal on-the-job training and formal short courses is a cost e ffective way to develop more productive and competent employees.
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From page 59... ...
Short course without lab Water and wastewater Short course without lab Coatings Corrosion Clinic Short course without lab Defense industry Short course without lab Automotive industry Center for Professional Short course without lab Oil and gas industry Advancement Corrosion Courses Short course without lab Oil and gas industry PetroSkills, LLC Short course without lab Oil and gas industry Courses Oklahoma State University Short course without lab External on applied Purdue Underground Short course without lab Cathodic protection technology- Short Course (basic) specific corrosion Short course without lab Cathodic protection (advanced)
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From page 60... ...
In other design and engineering disciplines, undergraduate engineering students typically learn little about materials selection and usually have no more than one or two lectures on corrosion, often none. Whereas graduate engineering students specializing in corrosion get formal training in it, graduate MSE students are typically not required to take a course in corrosion; moreover, such courses are only offered in departments where there is a faculty member with expertise in corrosion.
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in noncorrosion field Would increase Would increase knowledge with extensive on-the-job knowledge training Minimally B.S. in noncorrosion field n/a Could increase corrosion knowledgeable with minimal on-the-job awareness and job performance training No degree but on-the-job n/a Could increase corrosion training awareness and job performance Minimal to Procurement official with n/a Could increase corrosion none: nontechnical degree awareness and job performance Familiarity would be Maintenance and production n/a Could increase corrosion beneficial worker with trade school awareness and job effectiveness education Maintenance and production n/a Could increase corrosion worker with high school awareness and job effectiveness education Maintenance technicians and n/a Could increase corrosion military personnel awareness and job effectiveness NOTE: n/a means the committee believes the course would not benefit that category of worker relative to its effort or cost.
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From page 62... ...
. In the committee's opinion, anything learned from short courses, while beneficial, is not as deep as the learning from a rigorous corrosion education curriculum that teaches basic science, engineering, and mathematics and gives an engineer the intellectual skills to perform complex tasks, create new materials and innovative processes, and solve difficult problems that enable the control and mitigation of corrosion.
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