In many areas of industry survival of equipment in aggressive environments is conditional on the formation of protective surface films. Under certain single-phase (high flow rates, disturbed flow and particularly under multi-phase flow conditions protective films can be removed leading to severe localised attack. This phenomenon is often called flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) or erosion-corrosion (EC).

Some of the numerous examples are:

• Power production industry - magnetite films form on the internal pipe walls of heat exchangers in fossil fuel as well as nuclear power plants;
• Oil and gas production and transportation industry- carbonate films form on the internal steel surfaces of long pipelines;
• Minerals processing industry - a combination of oxide films and mineral scales form on heat exchanger surfaces which are exposed to process fluids.

In all these cases protective films enable use of mild steel which would otherwise be discarded as the construction material. Indeed, application of other corrosion resistant materials such as stainless steel is possible, however at a very high investment cost (up to four times higher). In some cases when the investment costs and especially material costs are a significant part of the overall cost (such as in the case of very long offshore oil and gas pipelines) mild steel is the only economically viable option . Dr. Nesic and has published a number of papers in this area (see list of publications), including the following-

Erosion-Corrosion in Single and Multiphase Flow (soft copy not available)