Nickel-aluminium bronze (NAB) plays a critical role in seawater cooling of power stations, marine propulsion, and offshore energy applications. As the marine industry advances toward net-zero emissions and decarbonisation, extending asset lifetimes and improving energy efficiency have become essential. Despite casting standards designed to minimise selective phase attack, NAB often underperforms under erosion-corrosion conditions, particularly in environments involving cavitation and solid particle loading, leading to premature component failure, costly maintenance, and reduced operational efficiency. This review critically examines recent research on erosion-corrosion performance of NAB alloys, with a focus on surface condition and surface-environment interactions that govern degradation mechanisms. It highlights the influence of pre-conditioning treatments ( e.g ., shot peening, long-term seawater immersion), the resultant compressive residual surface stresses, and the role of oxide film formation in mitigating surface damage. The review also evaluates the impact of deposition techniques, including surface welding, friction stir welding, and explores the effects of alloying additions, such as chromium (Cr) and rare earth elements (Ce, Sm and Yb) on corrosion resistance and mechanical integrity. Additionally, it assesses the performance of coated NAB and associated nickel-based alloys being considered as alternative for geothermal applications. By assessing both cavitation and slurry erosion-corrosion studies, this review identifies key microstructural factors, such as κ-phase distribution, galvanic coupling, and work hardening, that influence synergy between mechanical and corrosion degradation. It also provides fresh insight into the urgent need for standardisation test protocol to enable meaningful comparisons across alloy variants and environmental conditions. Ultimately, this review provides guidance for the design and optimisation of NAB components for high performance, low-maintenance operation in aggressive marine environments. • Researchers have studied a wide range of NAB variants, including as-cast (with some heat treated), powder metallurgy, friction stir welding, hot extrusion and shot peened, with some incorporating additions of rare earth elements or chromium. However, this diversity in alloy processing has made meaningful comparisons difficult. • The NAB performance under slurry erosion-corrosion shows that most treatments of as-cast NAB (peening, laser treatment, quenching) reduce material loss rates by 30% compared to as-cast NAB. In contrast, NAB produced via powder metallurgy show more modest reduction of 11%. High strength manganese-silicon alloys and electroplated Ni-Al-Cu coatings applied to NAB yield the most significant reductions of 45% and up to 90%, respectively. • Under cavitation erosion-corrosion, treatments of as-cast NAB (additions of Yb and FSP processing) also reduce loss rates by around 30%. The process of Direct Energy Deposition of-NAB gave the largest reduction of 75%. Laser treatments of MAB reduced mass loss by 9.8 times compared to the untreated MAB. However, NAB with anodic and seawater filmed oxide layers yield 3 to 16.5 times higher loss rates compared to air filmed NAB. • plotted against shows extremely synergistic combinations of alloy and environment combinations. The highest magnification factor of 8.7 was seen when high levels of sulphide are present in oxygenated seawater (200 ppm) under cavitation erosion-corrosion. when CNAB 747 pre exposed to seawater for three months the exposed to cavitation erosion-corrosion, for CNAB in artificial and NaCl solution cavitation erosion-corrosion, 2 for Cu/Ni under jet impingement. • Cavitation, flow and slurry erosion-corrosion all appear to activate similar degradation processes that target specific phases within the microstructure of NAB surfaces. • This review highlights the complex interplay between microstructure, electrochemical activity, and mechanical stress in governing erosion-corrosion in governing the performance of NAB alloys.
Wood et al. (Sun,) studied this question.