Protective Coatings

Protective coatings cover a broad range of paints and barriers which are used to provide corrosion protection to assets such as ships, buildings or structures to which they are applied. Common examples include epoxy coatings with high barrier properties to prevent water intrusion, zinc rich primers providing corrosion protection and urethane based coatings providing excellent UV resistance.

Protective coatings are selected using criteria such as cost, intended service life, environmental conditions and application. The characteristics of different coating system will vary greatly depending on the intended use. Environments such as chemical storage tanks, offshore installations or high temperature pipelines each provide unique challenges for coatings, which is why selecting the right coating with proper pre-qualification is critical.

What role could Endures play for you:

  • Advice in coating selection
  • Laboratory facilities to examine coating performance in a wide range of applications.

Application

A big prerequisite for successful long term performance of a coating system is its proper application. Surface preparation, film thickness, ambient conditions such as temperature and humidity and the proper (use of) application tools are all factors which have to be taken into account for a proper application.

Endures can help you with a proper application by:

  • Witnessing application by NACE or FROSIO certified inspectors
  • Writing or evaluating test inspection plans (ITP) to provide guidance in the application process

Coating Failure Analysis

Coatings degrade naturally throughout their service life because of factors like UV radiation from sunlight, the influence of temperature, humidity and so forth. Aside from natural ageing effects, a poor choice in coating selection or an incorrect application thereof, can lead to all kinds of coating failure. A coating can develop defects like blistering, cracking (or ‘crocodiling’), and loss of adhesion etc etc.

Once defects in the coating system become apparent, the underlying substrate may already be showing advanced signs of corrosion. This is a particular issue with insulated pipes where, due to the insulation, defects are not noticed until they are quite advanced; but this issue extends to all coated surfaces.

Endures is the right company to provide you with:

  • Practical expertise in coating failure analysis, using a combination of field inspections and laboratory facilities
  • Coating service life predictions using EIS, a non destructive technique (NDT)
  • Advice concerning repair strategies and maintenance planning

Prolonging the service life of your assets

Services

Companies and organizations that want to learn more about the performance of protective coatings for civil and maritime applications can contact Endures for a wide range services, including:

  • Field inspections and measurements on ships, pipelines and infrastructure by NACE or FROSIO certified inspectors.
  • Coating Failure analysis
  • Advice on coating choice and application aspects of coatings
  • On site measurement of anti-corrosive properties of coatings  (pipelines, ship tanks, ship hull, structures)
  • Advice and expertise in the field of application of (protective) coatings
  • Review of coating specifications and inspection and test plans (ITP)

Learn more about these tests?

Would you like to know more about performing (the best) tests for the coatings of your ship(s) / asset(s)?

Laboratory & Testing Facilities

Endures has a laboratory located in the port city of Den Helder in the Netherlands, with direct access to natural sea-water. Here our coating-experts can perform a wide range of multidisciplinary experiments under diverse environmental conditions and exposure regimes. Some of these tests and experiments include:

  • Outdoor exposure weathering tests in a maritime (ISO 12944-2 C3 – C4) environment
  • Coating testing in cyclic exposure (wet / dry, thermal shock) regimes in still or flowing natural seawater
  • Coating tests under impressed current (cathodic disbonding tests) in sea water (ASTM G8, ASTM G95, ISO 15711)
  • Coating tests during exposure to chemicals or reaction mixtures
  • Corrosion testing of coatings exposed to ballast water treatment systems based on chemically active principles (G9 approval IMO / GESAMP)
  • Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) (ISO 16773 etc) for determining barrier properties of coatings and providing coating service life predictions
  • Determining a wide range of coating properties like film thickness (ISO 19840. ISO 2808), colour (ISO 16644-4), gloss (ISO 2813), adhesion (ISO 2409, ISO 4624, ASTM D4541) chemical resistance (ISO 2812-2) and many others.

These are just a handful of the options we can offer. If you would like more information or have any other questions regarding coatings, you can contact us here.

Outdoor exposure testing under C3/C4 conditions
Exposure testing under various cyclic &
environmental regimes
Electrochemical
Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)
Previous slide
Next slide

More information about Coatings?

Picture of Sibo Buter

Sibo Buter

Researcher Coating and Conservation

+31 (0) 6 53 37 93 62