It can be tough to be an engineer.
You live in a world in which everything falls apart in spite of your best
efforts. Constraints abound, not the least of which is that even the most
enduring materials last only so long. If economics
is the dismal science,
engineering is the dismal art.
If the technical aspects of rust, more broadly corrosion, do
not impress most readers, the economic aspects of it might. The U.S. Department
of Defense (DOD) estimated in 2011
that it spent $21 billion annually dealing with corrosion. One might guess that
corrosion is costing us at least as much in our civil infrastructure,
private businesses
and homes.
Of course, corrosion isn’t a sexy subject. To make its awareness videos
on corrosion more appealing, the DOD recruited LeVar Burton,
known for his roles in Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation, to
host. Journalist
Jonathan
Waldman attempts to hook his readers by starting his book, Rust, with a story of an American icon,
the Statue of Liberty.
When the Statue of Liberty was built, her makers unintentionally created
something like a giant battery. While
this current worked well to preserve the copper shell of the statue, atoms of
the iron framework began to shuffle away, leading to serious corrosion. By the 1980s,
the problem was serious enough to inspire a major renovation effort.
Waldman approaches the problem of corrosion through stories. In the
Statue of Liberty we see that is something historically overlooked by engineers
and actively ignored by administrators who can pass the problem on to a
successor. Similarly, the military resisted Congress’ push
to make it more responsive to the issues. Since then, the DOD has integrated
corrosion concern into the way it does business, but civilian agencies are
mostly dragging their heels.
Only a few of the stories come from government.
Waldman also looks at the issue from the perspective of the aluminum can
industry and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline—his recounting of a pigging of the pipeline
surprisingly conveys some of the sense of drama that the people who undertake
the effort must feel. He also dips into the early history of corrosion
prevention in the work of chemist Sir Humphrey
Davy for the British Navy and Harry
Brearley, a discoverer and popularizer of stainless steel.
Waldman’s book is not a textbook on corrosion by any means; it is
written for a popular audience. He does try to present how serious an issue it
is—especially how costly it is. Fortunately, reasonable solutions to some of
our most pressing rust problems are within reach if we have the will to do
something about it.
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