Development of Epoxy Nanocomposite Coatings for Corrosion Protection of Steel Structures in Maine Environment

The corrosion protection of metallic structures has always been of chief concern for current research and development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it faces severe corrosion issues due to its huge cost-effective and industrial development in the coastline regions. To overcome these issues, several strategies have been followed to reduce the corrosion problems of metallic structures in aggressive environments. One possible way to solve the problem of metallic corrosion is to protect it using highly corrosion resistance coatings. The abundant commercial demand for anticorrosion coatings has prompted in a current dissemination of approaches anticipated to deliver high corrosion and wear resistance to various metallic substrates and several methods involve the incorporation of corrosion inhibitive pigments in nanoscale dimension into organic coatings. Recent progresses made in the fabrication and characterization of nanomaterials have validated their impact in the field of protective coatings towards steel structures at Kingdom. In particular, epoxy nanocomposites (NC) have become a very fascinating area in Kingdom in the past two decades since nanomaterials have an affirmative impact on the mechanical, thermal and especially anticorrosive and antifouling performances of the epoxy coatings on steel surface. In the present investigation, we are aiming to develop hybrid epoxy coatings with conducing polymer modified RGO with the improved corrosion protection and tribological performance over mild steel structures in marine environment. Hybrid epoxy coatings will be prepared with the different amount of inclusion of modified rGO into the epoxy matrix. The prepared hybrid epoxy coatings will be characterized using UV-Visible spectral and TGA analyses. Further, the surface morphology and composition of the coated steel substrates without and with nanomaterials will be examined by SEM/EDX analysis. A uniform dispersion of nanomaterials in epoxy coating will be confirmed by TEM analysis. Surface hydrophilicity of coated steel substrates will be evaluated through contact angle measurements. Electrochemical corrosion behaviour of coated steel substrates will be examined using electrochemical impedance spectroscopic measurements and potentiodynamic polarization test in artificial sea water. Tribological tests will also be done to evaluate the wear and friction characteristics of steel substrates with hybrid epoxy coatings.