Francesca Cibotti Materials Scientist & Industrial Process Expert

Materials Scientist skilled in root cause failure analysis. Led over 200 failure analysis investigations ranging from oil and gas components to proprietary technology hardware. Experienced in metallurgy, corrosion, polymers, industrial processes, mechanical failures, and glass failures.

Materials Failure Analysis & Investigation
Specialize in forensic failure analysis of metals, polymers, and glass across diverse industries including industrial, medical and consumer products. Experienced in identifying material, design, and process failures by integrating metallurgical, corrosion, mechanical, and polymer failure mechanisms with process data and field history.

Consumer Products Failure Analysis
Expertise in investigating failures of consumer electronics, medical devices, fitness equipment, automotive parts, glass containers and more.

Industrial & Building Systems Failure Analysis
Extensive background in evaluating the effects of water and industrial processes, including corrosive and fouling environments, on equipment reliability. Expertise includes protective coatings selection, design validation testing, surface treatment assessments, and deployment of advanced coatings to prevent fouling, scaling, and corrosion.

Oil and Gas Process & Equipment Reliability Consulting
Provided technical leadership in cross-functional projects to maintain and enhance equipment reliability in complex environments such as crude units, heat transfer, hydrogen service, biofuel processing, sour water, fluid catalytic cracking, and high temperature conditions. Led multidisciplinary teams in developing non-destructive examination methods for High Temperature Hydrogen Attack detection and equipment degradation analysis after exposure to challenging process fluids.

Failure Analysis & Materials Engineering Leadership
Former Lead for Chevron's downstream failure analysis program, overseeing all internal and external failure analysis requests. Led investigations of critical failures resulting in plant shutdowns and fires, leveraging standards such as ASME BPVC, API 571, and AWS D1.1. Provided strategic input into corporate engineering standards and trained refinery engineers and new hires on the failure analysis process and methodologies.

Analytical Testing Expertise
Expertise in a wide range of analytical and characterization techniques including SEM, EDS, TEM, FTIR, DSC, TGA, EBSD, ICP-OES, CT, nanoindentation, as well as mechanical testing (tensile, hardness, Charpy, DMA). Proficient in integrating laboratory data with process and operational insights to deliver comprehensive root cause investigations and mitigation strategies.

Professional Experience

Provide technical investigations, analysis, reports, and testimony toward the resolution of material failures. Proficient in root cause analysis through combining process information and material evaluation to determine causation.

• Conducted more than 100 failure analysis (FA) investigations spanning across all Apple products, from component level to system level hardware
• Served all of Apple’s internal clients including iPhone, Mac, wearables, chargers, prototype technologies, and others
• Built relationships with external labs to support overflow work when the internal lab lacked the capability or bandwidth to perform the FA internally
• Designed experiments and provided metallurgical, materials, and process expertise to Apple's internal customers
• Conducted Early Field Failure Analysis (EFFA) of newly launched products, shipped products, and early development prototype level hardware to support failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
• Analyzed hardware including major logic boards, coatings, packaging, films, product housing, and defective products
• Analyzed plastic failures including nylon, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), polycarbonate, polyester, and epoxy materials
• Utilized technical data sheets (TDS) and material safety data sheets (MSDS) in support of root cause failure analysis
• Utilized various analytical techniques to determine strength of materials, composition, and other material properties to determine causation

Materials Technology Project Manager 2020-2023

Process Engineering Focus

• Led R&D efforts to evaluate biofuels and other renewable feedstocks' effects on equipment reliability
• Designed and executed corrosion and fouling tests to determine which feeds could be co-processed in the refineries at which concentrations
• Evaluated the efficacy of antioxidants in preventing oxidation of feed
• Successfully led efforts related to the co-processing soybean oil in the Chevron El Segundo Refinery in 2021, which was the first refinery to co-process biofuels in a fluid catalytic cracking plant making gasoline, jet, and diesel fuels
• Expanded the analysis to encompass blends of biofuels and the possibility of using melted plastic as a feedstock
• Evaluated the effectiveness of surface treatments in preventing corrosion and fouling/scaling in biofuels service
• Aligned the development of internal standards regarding material grades, welding requirements, and damage mechanisms in these service conditions
• Educated new hires for Chevron in failure analysis, specialized in heat exchanger failures
• Performed failure analysis on heat exchanger parts including tubes, tubesheets, shells, baffles, fired heaters, boilers

Protective Coating Focus

• Developed relationships with several protective coating providers and evaluated their technologies through experimental design and execution
• Evaluated coatings in numerous services that led to deployment of coatings on equipment like heat exchangers and furnaces that were most affected by fouling/scaling from cooling water and hydrocarbons
• Developed a modified two-layer self-healing coating for corrosion protection of equipment in corrosive environments in collaboration with paint vendors

Equipment Reliability R&D Project Manager 2018-2020

• Led a cross-organizational team (total of four companies) of engineers and scientists to develop and deploy a “self-healing” coating technology capable of autonomously repairing mechanical damage for corrosion prevention of offshore and onshore assets
• Worked with paint and coating manufacturers prior to vetting a new technology to meet Chevron Engineering Standards and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards for corrosion protection
• Designed and executed validation testing, developed industry's first test methodology for evaluating self-healing materials
• Led a multidisciplinary engineering team on a project aimed to improve non-destructive examination techniques for detecting High Temperature Hydrogen Attack in steel to maintain equipment reliability in hydrogen service
• Functioned as the Project Lead responsible for testing and evaluating reliability of equipment after exposure to polymers, produced and synthetic cooling water, biofuels, or high temperature crude oil
• Worked as Project Lead responsible for designing and executing tests to validate coating technologies to prevent fouling/scaling in heat exchangers and cooling water systems
• Led several failure analysis investigations of heat exchanger parts
• Validated and deployed 10 protective coating technologies

Materials Engineer/Failure Analysis Lead 2015-2018

• Managed all of Chevron's downstream failure analysis requests
• Carried out more than 75 failure analyses of hardware, including pressure vessels, heat exchangers, rotating equipment, bolts, fasteners, piping, nonmetallic materials, weld failures, and high reliability investigations requested from other oil companies
• Utilized American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Approved American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) in support of failure analysis investigations
• Managed and prioritized work coming into the Chevron Materials Lab and delegated failure analysis projects to the appropriate engineers or self
• Provided corrosion and metallurgical expertise to Chevron’s internal clients
• Supported capital expenditure projects and lab improvement initiatives for lab equipment upgrades to optimize technical service and increase R&D capability
• Trained new materials engineers hired in Chevron’s technical center and the refineries on the principles and process of conducting a failure analysis and using American Petroleum Institute (API) 571 Damage Mechanisms Affecting Fixed Equipment in the Refining Industry as a reference guideline
• Conducted qualitative and metallographic analysis as well as investigation into the process streams and equipment functionality to come to a comprehensive root cause and solution for the customer
• Investigated maintenance practices and inspection protocols on the failed equipment in support of each failure analysis
• Utilized ANSI approved American Welding Society (AWS) D1.1 structural welding code
• Provided failure analysis expertise, sour water corrosion modeling, and general materials consulting for Joint Ventures such as BAPCO, CLG, Caltex
• Conducted two analyses of BAPCO's VBU and Crude Unit failures that resulted in a fire and a plant shut down, respectively
• Authored the update of the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Chevron Engineering Standard to reflect recent studies and failure analysis data for corrosion prevention
• Well versed in the processes associated with several plants in the refining process including crude preheat, hydrotreating, cracking, amine treating, distillation, alkylation, sour water
• Promoted to next pay scale grade with management responsibilities five months after starting at the company

• Supported the Subsea Production System (SPS) team on a technology project to design subsea equipment that could withstand up to 20ksi (kip per square inch) pressure and 350F temperatures in order to explore ultra-deepwater reservoirs
• Conducted a valve fatigue study to exhibit how 20ksi mudline pressures would affect the fatigue life of individual SPS gate valves during operation to serve as a basis of design that accommodates recent revisions to API 17TR8, High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) Design Guidelines
• Shared knowledge from Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) safety alerts to the project team for awareness and in support of risk reduction actions and Hazard Identification (HAZID) processes

Education

B.S., (Cum Laude) Materials Science and Engineering - Metals, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Training and Competencies

Analytical Techniques:

• Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
• Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS)
• Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)
• Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD)
• Water Contact Angle
• Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC)
• Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA)
• Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR)
• X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF)
• X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)
• Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES)
• Computed Tomography (CT)
• Tensile Testing
• Hardness
• Charpy V-Notch (CVN)
• Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA)
• Nanoindentation
• Nanoscratch

Professional Memberships

• ASM International
  • Failure Analysis Society
• Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) formally known as NACE
• The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS)
• Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)
• Heat Transfer Research Institute (HTRI)
  • Crude Oil Fouling Task Force, 2022 (Chevron Representative)
• Heat Exchanger Fouling and Cleaning

Publications/Speaking Engagements

Rogel, E.; Cibotti, F.; et al. Investigation on Crude Oil Fouling Behavior. American Chemical Society, 2022

Cibotti, F.; et al. Incorporating Self-Healing Technology into Protective Coatings as a Maintenance Solution for Offshore Oil and Gas Assets. Materials Performance, 2019.Sco

Cibotti, F.; et al. Comparison of Heat Exchanger Fouling Test Results for Once-Through and Recirculating Modes of Operation. Speaker at the Heat Exchanger Fouling and Cleaning Conference, Warsaw, Poland, 2019.

Patents

• pH Control in Fluid Treatment, US11591893B2, published February 28, 2023
• Treating Fluid Comprising Hydrocarbons, Water, and Polymer, US11242739B2, published February 08, 2022

v. 05/28/25