3. Case studies

3.1 Glass-polyester tank failure

• Survey results

  Structure: 20 m ³ glass-polyester tank.

  Environment: containing: iron perchloride pH 1.1.

  operating temperature: – 15 to + 35 °C.

  Rupture: 10 months after start-up, the tank shell broke cleanly (see figure 7 ).

• Indices

  When a composite wall breaks in contact with an acidic medium, this suggests chemical degradation of the material.

• Analyses...