The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Corrosion Policy and Oversight Office (Washington, DC) recently announced its 2017 awards for lifetime achievement and research excellence in corrosion science, corrosion engineering, and corrosion technology.
Daniel J. Dunmire, director of the office, presented the awards at the 2017 DoD-Allied Nations Technical Corrosion Conference in Birmingham, Alabama.
Ralph P.I. Adler Award
The 2017 Ralph P.I. Adler Award was presented to Richard A. Hays, deputy director of the Corrosion Policy and Oversight Office, for extraordinary accomplishments and leadership in combating corrosion and material degradation throughout his career.
“Hays’ leadership was vital to the fight against a $23 billion corrosion challenge, as he brought down the cost of corrosion, improved weapon system availability, and extended the useful service life of facility and infrastructure projects across the department,” Dunmire says.
Hays was recognized for efficiently executing as much as $40 million in fiscal year funds to meet strategic department goals in addressing corrosion issues. “His role in providing the best corrosion expertise positively impacted source selection evaluations, system performance trade-offs, and logistics support decisions,” Dunmire adds.
The DoD office also recognized five out of 149 authors.
Corrosion Management
Winning the top prize in the realm of corrosion management, Meghan McGinley of the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland) examined current methods of equipment storage and various strategies to achieve the most cost-effective method to optimize protection over the life of a weapon system.
Corrosion Science
For her research into corrosion science, Elmira Ghanbari of the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, California) won for her investigation of the influence of lithium content on the passivity breakdown of an aluminum alloy, experimentally, through the use of a point defect model.
Corrosion Technology
In the category of corrosion technology, Erica Macha of the Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, Texas) received the top award for exploring the effects of aerospace primers on galvanic multi-electrode arrays in controlled relative humidity environments
Corrosion Resistant Materials
In the area of corrosion resistant materials, Sergei Shipilov of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) received the top honor for his study of fielded, double V-hull Stryker light-armored vehicles found to have structural cracking issues that affected availability.
Facilities and Infrastructure
In the realm of facilities and infrastructure, Michael McInerney of the U.S. Army Construction Engineer Research Laboratory (Champaign, Illinois) won first place for examining the effectiveness of material upgrades to steel water pumps that experience failures and significant downtime due to their exposure to alternate wet and dry cycles in pump wells.
Scientific Poster Awards
Out of 40 scientific posters, the DoD office recognized three competitors from a pool of graduate and undergraduate students representing universities across the United States.
Bob Peterson of the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) (Hattiesburg, Mississippi) received the Milton Levy Award for Corrosion Science. This poster focused on how the location, persistence, and bound nature of water in protective, polymer-based surface coatings play a crucial role in anti-corrosion performance, concentrating on the relationship between free and bound water and ion mobility.
Austin Maples, also a USM student, won the Robert J. Ferrara Award for Corrosion Engineering. His project involved developing sensors that identified water ingress into coatings, and then modeling those ingress rates as a function of the various coating chemistries.
Finally, Michael Melia of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia) received the Richard (Dick) Kinzie Award for Applied Corrosion Technology. His poster explored how laser treatment has been used to process magnesium alloys to remove surface secondary particles.
Source: Armed with Science, science.dodlive.mil. Contact Cynthia Greenwood, DoD Corrosion Office Outreach & Communications Liaison, email: cynthiagreenwood@flaviusink.com.