Steven Bradley
Principal Consultant, Bradley Consulting Services
Steven Bradley is currently the principal consultant at Bradley Consulting Services having retired after 44 years from UOP-Honeywell as Senior Research Fellow. At UOP-Honeywell, a supplier to the refining and petrochemical industries, he conducted failure analyses for the refining, chemical and petrochemical industries by utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach for the identification of the root cause of the failure.
Some of his areas of specialty include refinery, chemical and petrochemical failures, corrosion caused failures, process modifications to mitigate corrosion issues and identifying and preventing potential issues that might result in pre-mature failure of the process unit. He was actively involved in the commercialization of an austenitic stainless steel alloy that does not sensitize during elevated temperature exposure and thus is not susceptible to polythionic acid stress corrosion cracking.
Steven is an expert in microscopy and advanced characterization utilizing analytical instrumentation and was elected as a Fellow of ASM for developing during his career the unique application of these characterization techniques to the development of catalysts for refinery and petrochemical applications as well as his major contributions in the areas of metallurgy. For his contributions to the ASTM Committee on Catalysts, he was awarded the ASTM Fellow Award of Merit.
He is also membership chair of the ASM Failure Analysis Society and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Illinois. He has presented and authored/co-authored over 60 technical papers involving failure analyses of complex systems, materials characterization and advanced electron microscopy of materials and catalysts and holds 16 patents. Steven completed his BSSE and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University. In addition to being a member of ASM and ASTM, he is also a member of NACE and ACS.
The ASTM has developed several tests to evaluate an austenitic stainless steel’s susceptibility to intergranular corrosion. Here are six:
MIC occurs when a material degrades due to a microorganism's metabolic action. Here’s what you need to know about identification and protection:
Naphthenic Acid Corrosion can be a difficult to predict although naphthenic acid is present in crude oil. Here's what you need to know:
Metal dusting is a catastrophic form of corrosion degradation. Here's what you need to know about it—and how to mitigate it when it occurs:
Nickel-based alloys aren't completely resistant to environmental cracking. Learn about the conditions in which these alloys are susceptible:
A detailed and thorough analysis should follow any corrosion failure. Here we cover what that entails.
An understanding of the mechanisms behind SRC can help prevent it or conduct more thorough failure analyses when it happens.
High-temperature corrosion involves a number of key products. By identifying these, it is possible to prevent future corrosion.
Discover some typical expected aqueous corrosion products for various alloys and conditions.
Fretting Corrosion Between Metals, Its Causes, Some Examples, and How to Prevent It
Many techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) can be employed to provide vital information about corrosion products.
Austenitic stainless steels are susceptible to caustic cracking. We discuss environments where this is common, how to identify it, and how to prevent it.
Polythionic acid stress corrosion cracking of austenitic stainless steel can be prevented by an appropriate soda ash neutralization solution or removal of...
Chloride stress corrosion cracking (Cl-SCC) is the most common type of cracking of austenitic stainless steel. It has been the observed cause of metal...
An overview of chloride, caustic and polythionic acid stress corrosion cracking is presented in…
The short answer to the question is yes. Zinc does rust.Like all metals, zinc corrodes when exposed to air and moisture. However, this...
Steel's endurance limit can be measured in several ways. A polished sample -- wherein potential surface initiation sites, such as...
