The site exposes coated and uncoated specimens to a genuine marine atmosphere, alongside a laboratory running the accelerated regimes that the field data exists to keep honest.
Its value is precisely its slowness. Accelerated corrosion testing is fast, standardised and frequently wrong about the relative ranking of coatings, because the mechanism it accelerates is not always the mechanism that governs in service. A long-running field site provides the correction, and the correction is sometimes uncomfortable for a supplier.
Programmes here are measured in years, which suits asset owners specifying a thirty-year design life and frustrates anyone with a funding round. The honest advice is to start a field programme early and cheaply, in parallel with whatever accelerated work the schedule demands.
The laboratory alongside handles salt spray, cyclic corrosion, adhesion and electrochemical assessment, so a programme can run both routes and compare them directly.
Specification
- Marine atmospheric exposure racks with controlled orientation
- Salt spray and cyclic corrosion cabinets
- Electrochemical impedance and polarisation measurement
- Coating adhesion, thickness and porosity assessment
- Metallography for cross-sectional examination of degraded specimens
- Long-term specimen archive with documented exposure history
What it is the right answer to
Jobs this facility genuinely suits.
- Comparative coating performance over multi-year exposure
- Correlating an accelerated regime against genuine field behaviour
- Qualifying a coating system against an asset owner's specification
- Investigating premature coating failure on an installed asset
- Assessing repair and touch-up systems under realistic conditions
What to bring
Turning up without these costs facility hours rather than bench hours.
- Specimens prepared to the same standard as your production process
- The specification and design life the coating is meant to achieve
- Control specimens of an incumbent system, for a comparison that means something
- Patience, and a programme long enough to produce a defensible answer
What you leave with
- Periodic assessment records with photographic documentation
- Accelerated test results alongside field data for direct comparison
- Cross-sectional analysis of degradation mechanisms
- A ranking of systems with an honest statement of confidence
Limitations
Worth knowing before you write the proposal.
- Field results cannot be hurried, and anyone promising otherwise is selling an accelerated test
- A single site represents one environment, not every environment your asset will meet
- Specimens prepared better than production will flatter the coating