Mining Institute of Scotland (MIS)

Palm Court Hotel, Aberdeen

Our November meeting will be delivered by Sarah Bagnall, R-TECH Materials and is being run jointly with the ICorr.

When engineering plant, equipment or components fail in service the consequence can have the potential to be catastrophic for human safety and well-being, the environment and / or continuity of operations. On a lower level, the effect of such occurrences can include the requirement to reschedule production, execution of emergency repairs and missed customer deliveries. The impact of plant failures is undoubtedly negative for plant operators, however, determining the root cause of such failures presents an opportunity to learn from the experience. Adopting such a philosophy is critical to the continual improvement of plant safety, performance, availability, and reliability, whilst reducing maintenance costs.

Conducting an effective Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigation provides the opportunity to understand and critically analyse all of the factors that have contributed towards a plant failure. Failure analysis is an essential tool that can be used within an RCA investigation to characterise defects that have caused or contributed to a plant failure event. Determining and understanding the failure mode is critical to being able to deduce the root cause of the failure. When a material fails, it leaves behind a trail of evidence, which can be pieced together to determine the cause of failure. In this presentation, the necessary steps for a materials failure analysis are discussed along with failure mechanisms which may be encountered within the oil and gas industry. Case studies relevant to the industry will also be presented.

Sarah is a materials engineer and Chartered Engineer specialising in failure analysis particularly for the petrochemical, oil & gas, and power generation industries. With over 700 failure investigations conducted, Sarah has broad experience with a wide range of engineering components, metallic and non-metallic materials, and industries. Sarah has extensive expertise in corrosion of a wide range of materials, particularly for the chemical processing and petrochemical industries. Over the last 10 years, Sarah has developed specialist expertise in the corrosion and thermal degradation of austenitic stainless steels. Sarah is also the Chair of the Wales & South West England branch for the Institute of Corrosion



This is an in-person lecture that will be delivered at the Palm Court Hotel in Aberdeen.  

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