Despite the COVID-19, last month was full of exciting new projects and initiatives at Tecnalia. One of the them was the installation in HarshLab of 28 samples with an experimental corrosion sensing coating developed by University of Leicester in collaboration with The Welding Institute (TWI). This innovative coating system has been designed to protect offshore wind turbine tower structures and the main objective is to reduce the maintenance cost of these infrastructures.
Samples will be exposed during the next 6 months in HarshLab’s atmospheric exposure sites, with periodic visual inspections. Testing in HarshLab ensures an offshore marine environment with CX corrosivity, in similar conditions to those that final product might find in offshore wind turbine towers.
The research on the coatings is being funded by a group of UK institutions (TWI, the National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC), The University of Leicester, Lloyds Register Foundation and EPSRC), while access to HarshLab offshore materials and components lab was funded by EU project Marinet2’s Transnational Access Program.
