SO2/3  gases go through turbine engines as by-products of combustion of fuel, they are ingested as a result of volcanic activity and/or possibly enter the engine from the exhaust of the previous aeroplane on the runway. The detrimental effect of SO2/3 on nickel-based superalloys has long been studied, but is yet to be fully understood.

In an effort to elucidate the underlying corrosion mechanisms, we performed two studies: one to assess the quantity of SO2 and SO3 which is found at thermodynamic equilibrium at each temperature (as this will affect the corrosion rate of nickel superalloys) and one building a set up to flow specific gases on nickel superalloys while mechanical testing them. The set-up is capable to fatigue testing superalloy samples in a gaseous environment, which coupled with our state of the art cryogenic characterisation suite (glove box, plasma Focussed Ion Beam Microscope, Transmission Electron Microscope and Atom Probe) will allow us to elucidate corrosion mechanisms in nickel-based superalloys.

We present the set up and safety considerations when building a simulated engine corrosion environment in a laboratory.