Posted by: gCaptain.com
By Mike Schuler
You may have seen recently that Austal, a designer and manufacturer of high performance aluminium vessels including a number of vessels for the U.S. Navy, released this press release titled “Corrosion in Warships” addressing “galvanic corrosion” in the Littoral Combat Ship, USS Independence (LCS-2). At the time I didn’t think much of it and, in fact, did not cover it here on gCaptain. It wasn’t until someone passed along an article from Wired and read this article from Bloomberg that I understood the extent of the problem and Austal’s stance on the “aggressive corrosion” issues found on the U.S. Navy’s newest warship. Read Full Article Here.
Interesting story. The other thing about Aluminium is that it is a very unstable metal – it is only the oxide coating which stops it combusting.
In the Falklands war, the British Navy found this out – the aluminium superstructure caught fire once hit by the missiles and torpedos – and burning incandescently to the waterline.
Bad choice of metal all around.