Intertek’s chemical analysis of metals can identify and quantify the elemental composition of the material and help support your quality control processes.
Chemical analysis of metals is used for a wide variety of purposes and can help companies with their manufacturing quality control, reverse engineering and failure investigations.
Material identification, characterisation and verification are essential for businesses to ensure their materials or products have been manufactured to the correct alloy grade and conform to national or international codes and standards. Metal chemical analysis is also used in reverse engineering to determine the alloys used to produce a component and in failure investigations to establish whether the correct alloy was used.
Finding the right partner to provide an accurate chemical analysis of your metals is important and Intertek’s highly experienced staff can analyse a diverse range of metals and use a variety of techniques, from semi-quantitative to fully quantitative methods, that will identify and quantify the elemental composition of a metal alloy. We serve all industry sectors including oil and gas, aerospace, rail, automotive and medical devices, along with clients such as foundries, precision engineers and steel stockholders.
Our laboratories are accredited to ISO-17025 and Rolls Royce approved, and equipped with the latest technology.
Chemical analysis techniques include:
- Spark-OES (Optical emission spectrometer) – for bulk elemental analysis of steels, stainless steels, cast irons, copper, aluminium, cobalt, nickel, tin and zinc alloys.
- ICP-OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma – Optical Emission Spectrometer) – for bulk analysis of small samples, analysing to very low concentrations.
- Infared combustion (LECO) – for carbon and sulphur, and oxygen hydrogen and nitrogen small samples.
- XRF (X-ray fluorescence) – for analysing nickel alloys and semi-quantitively analysing all alloy systems.
In addition, our team can advise on the correct alloys to use in certain applications and we can also provide materials and mechanical testing.
By coming to Intertek for the chemical analysis of your metals, you can have the peace of mind that we will provide you with Total Quality Assurance in reliable test results and offer the responsive turnaround times to meet your schedules and requirements.
