Japanese automakers did the world a great favor when in the 80s and 90s they made much longer lasting cars and made longevity and resale value an important consideration in the purchasing decision. They did this mostly by using better paints and making sure cars and car parts are painted more thoroughly.
There are modern materials that prevent corrosion. Here is a company that sells ordinary looking paper that you can use to wrap anything and it will prevent it from rusting.
This is because there's basically no market for used cars older than 5 years in Japan
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.picknbuy24.com/amp/column_1...
https://www.reddit.com/r/mazda3/comments/adioma/polish_autom...
Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order
https://www.autoblog.com/2016/11/14/toyota-3-billion-settlem...
Their cars last longer because they put more emphasis on durability and longevity than bleeding edge performance, for parts that matter in extending overall operating life of a vehicle.
Germans may use their dollars differently, designs that require tighter tolerance for higher performance. They may also skimp out on actual durability testing, serviceability of parts, etc. Again, prioritizing performance over other attributes.
It's usually the frame, starting from the inside where it collects dirt and water absorbs into it where it won't evaporate and will stay in there damp for months.
Cutting and welding patches onto a frame isn't the biggest deal, and you can install drain holes with places to spray cavity wax coatings.
Once it's rusty inside, you're gonna have a battle. It really needs to be coated from day and then maintained.
The product I linked automatically emits a chemical which clings to the metal and creates a microscopic protective barrier. The layer is so thin it does not affect the mechanical properties of the metal so it does not have to be removed. Although it will go away by itself several hours after the part is taken out of the special packaging.
Anyways, I am not trying to sell the stuff, just letting people know what is available out there.
This is baseless fanboyism.
The European carmakers lead the way with various degrees of zinc plating and dipped coatings being widely implemented on their products in the 70s and 80s. Then around that time lead paint got banned in the US (creating that generation of cars that faded a lot in the 80s) and everybody in the US market was like "hey, we need alternatives that don't break the bank, let's copy what they're doing". The Japanese and US makers both upped their game for the north American market over roughly the same time period. The Japanese have never really taken corrosion prevention very seriously before or since. They and the US makes generally take a "we do as good a job as we need to remain competitive but we don't go above and beyond" attitude whereas the Europeans tend to put quite a bit more effort in.
Edit: If you want someone to lie to you to confirm your biases that's not gonna be me.
Ford developed e-coat in the 50's. Everyone took up this to varying extents during the mid-to-late 70's.
> whereas the Europeans tend to put quite a bit more effort in.
I'm sorry, this just doesn't match my experience looking at mid-80's Japanese, American, and European cars. e.g. Porsche took up galvanizing during the transition from the 911S to the 911SC and further worked to improve coatings leading up to the Carrera 3.2 to attempt to control rust, but 3.2s still fared really poorly in the corrosion department. Ditto for BMWs of the era.
> This is baseless fanboyism.
> Edit: If you want someone to lie to you to confirm your biases that's not gonna be me.
You just made a bunch of unsupported assertions yourself leaning in the opposite direction.
Anyways, yeah it would be fantastic if metal just didn’t corrode. That would be one of the greatest gifts to the world.
My dream is one for stainless steel. Come up with either a different alloy or an improved process to make corrosion-proof metal from abundant iron. I can't imagine the leap forward if a chunk of stainless cost nearly the same as mild steel. (And didn't have weird failure modes, etc.)
It's amazing how there's such a strong preference for things with size and weight, and how plastic is seen as cheap trash rather than an engineering marvel.
These probably aren't going to occur anywhere outside of a bioreactor, so our action figures are likely safe...for now!
This article, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/14/bugs-acr..., posted here a while back describes evidence that real world evolution is happening. "for now!" indeed.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579337
> The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.
But wood and paper are also readily biodegrade, and yet by simply by controlling the amount of moisture present we manage to make those last a long, long time. In addition we have treatment options to delay decomposition even in wet conditions.
Should be ° U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN, not ˚ U+02DA RING ABOVE.
Even if hypothetical rogue bacteria can't dissolve plastic parts to goo or cause structural damage, or there's still potential harm in the form of surface changes. Discoloration, flaking, etc.
Imagine a product nobody wants to buy because it looks damaged, or a medical device that can't be as easily/thoroughly sterilized anymore.
Plastic is indispensable just like electricity.
I have spent so much more money on stainless and galvanized parts and taken many expensive precautions, followed expensive building practices, etc. due to rust.
This was increased economic activity.
Not saying it was morally positive but it certainly increased GDP ...
https://www.aboutcivil.org/carbon-reinforced-concrete-buildi...
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Rust/Jonathan-Waldman...
> …Public investment in U.S. infrastructure as a share of GDP has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s. The World Economic Forum now ranks the United States 13th when it comes to the overall quality of infrastructure...
https://www.pennstainless.com/resources/product-information/...
Is pretty good stuff and
https://www.cralloys.com/alloys/17-chrome/
is possibly better still.
If you want (much) better rust resistance than that you are going to be into coatings or active protection such as cathodic protection using a sacrificial material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection
Coatings work well as long as there is no mechanical abrasion of the coating, cathodic protection works very well until you run out of sacrificial material.
For bridges or large-scale industrial applications where you dont care how the metal itself appears, I agree that coatings (especially galvanization) is the best bang for the buck. All of my insights are purely anecdotal though, as a hobbyist...
Just to be clear ... you can indeed coat things with stainless steel.
However, most stainless steel objects (like screws or bolts or tools, etc.) are stainless throughout - you cannot abrade or scratch into a non-stainless inner core.
This is unlike, for instance, galvanized hardware which is merely steel with a coating over the top. Galvanized items can, indeed, be mechanically altered to reveal non-galvanized material underneath.
As for my grandparents question:
You can, indeed, buy stainless steel beams, rebar[1], etc. They have all the fantastic properties you imagine and are, again, not merely coated like (for instance) galvanized rebar. They are also extremely expensive.
[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence-class_littoral_co...
> The U.S. navy does have some very large aluminum ships
Unfortunately aluminum also rusts, it just happens to be a chemically stable and resistant rusting - but not in a stable enough manner to be mechanically/abrasive resistant, that's why you don't see them deployed in widespread use at stressing conditions like internal combustion engine blocks or fast ship hulls.
From said cited Wikipedia article:
> In February 2020 it was announced that the Navy plans to retire the first four LCS ships. On 20 June 2020, the US Navy announced that all four would be taken out of commission in March 2021, and will be placed in inactive reserve, because it would be too expensive to upgrade them to match the later ships in the class.
When choosing a metal material, it's important to consider not just its innate properties, but it properties during join. Welding can melt the metal surrounding the weld, which can undo many heat treatment or mechanical processes previously used to get the material to the desired specs.
Now other thing I wonder is how structurally sound some of the stainless alloys are? Do they have similar characteristics to steels now used?
Anyway, O&M is the problem for the guy trying to get the next decade's budget approved so if the upkeep is more expensive, hey at least I got this thing built.
For such a process to be effective it has to be done immediately after welding. You can use it to try to repair something that is already rust damaged but in my experience the gain from that is mostly a stay of execution, not a perfect solution.
Anyway, O&M is the problem for the guy trying to get
the next decade's budget approved
It's a system explicitly designed to be short-sighted. There is massive disincentive to produce systems and infrastructure that will actually work some distance into the future. The only incentive for politicians is either (a) merely look like they're doing something (b) produce the fastest, cheapest possible thing that they can take credit for when they're up for re-election.
Democracy would only really thrive if the public valued the future, and had some reliable way of judging how our politicians' solutions actually benefit the future. (ex: I value the future, but if we build a bridge today I have no way of judging if it's built to last for 5 years or 500 years)
A lot of commercial aircraft have switch to composite materials to reduce weight even further than would be possible with just metals, though that approach has its own drawbacks.
Even if it was built, you'd also probably see people stealing parts of the structure for scrap value... Not a good thing to have happen.
https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Longest-War-Jonathan-Waldman/dp/...
""" Mighty ships upon the ocean
Suffer from severe corrosion
Even those that stay at dockside
Are rapidly becoming oxide.
Alas, that piling in the sea
Is mostly FE2O3
And when the ocean meets the shore,
You'll find there's FE3O4.
'Cause when the wind is salt and gusty
Things are getting awful rusty
We can measure it, we can test it
We can halt it or arrest it
We can gather it and weigh it
We can coat it, we can spray it
We can examine and dissect it
We can cathodically protect it
We can pick it up and drop it
But heaven knows, we'll never stop it.
So here's to rust: No doubt about it,
Most of us would starve without it. """
https://soundcloud.com/user-876103472/lennui-cest-loxyge-ne
Long story short: screw the meatbags, let's get rid of atmospheric oxygen...
But it's not like it's an obscure problem that nobody does anything about, lots of companies, universities and governments spend a lot of effort and money on finding better ways to deal with it.
> "A 2001 National Park Service report documented elevated levels of lead, cadmium, and zinc in vegetation along the road, as well as near the storage area by the port. Concentrations of lead and cadmium, the National Park Service report stated, exceed levels found in “many of the most polluted countries in Central and Eastern Europe and all areas of western Russia.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/most-toxi...
Usually mining companies respond by saying that requiring them to implement such solutions ('regulation') is anti-free-market and makes them uncompetitive, as they then have to sell their ore on global markets at higher prices or accept much lower profit margins.
I've never actually seen an industrial pollution problem that didn't have a technical (if sometimes expensive) solution. Making those solutions the norm (kind of like requiring all homes to have toilets, etc.) is the reason why regulation is a good idea, it flattens the markets so noone can undersell using dirty methods.
It's the environmental version of the trolley car problem, except you have an unknown number of people on each part of the train tracks.
Is it a 1:10 offset, where (holistically speaking) the zinc mine will cause 10x environmental damage as it prevents? Then maybe it shouldn't happen anywhere.
Is it 1:1 offset and we're merely insisting that the environmental damage should happen in a poorer country instead of our own?
Is it 10:1 or 100:1 where every kilogram of zinc means that's 10kg or 100kg of steel that won't prematurely rust and need to be replaced, with another 10kg of 100kg of iron ore being mined elsewhere and transported at great environmental cost to replace it? Then from an environmental standpoint it's a huge win and we should probably do it.
It's extremely difficult to know.
But if mining zinc lowers pollution from other stuff then yes.