The Corrosion of Iron and Steel

Abstract

The late Sir Robert Hadfield made a hobby of collecting statistics about steel, including the loss caused by corrosion; he mentioned at a time when the world slump was at its height that the destruction due to corrosion that year was probably greater than the total production of new steel. He might well have added, what are we chemists and metallurgists doing about it? For many years the only remedy was paint: the painting of the Forth Bridge has been described as an eternal circle of operations. When I was a student, G. T. Moody propounded a theory on what happens when iron rusts, which promptly brought forth a rival one from Wyndham Dunstan: engineers were aghast at the temerity of chemists in interfering with the normal happenings of Nature, and were not surprised that the chemists failed to agree. Forty years on, and the bad old times when iron rusted are giving way to the new age of rustless alloys, official committees of investigation, some understanding of the problem, and a considerable amount of first-class research.

The Corrosion of Iron and Steel

Being a General Account of the Work of the Corrosion Committee of the Iron and Steel Institute and the British Iron and Steel Federation. By Dr. J. C. Hudson. Pp. xv + 319 + 43 plates. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1940.) 18s. net.