Presentation at DFO

AIRBUS team of VIPCOAT project provided a presentation at the ‘Surface Treatment of Light Metals’ technical committee meeting of DFO (German Research Association for Surface Treatment) on 23 April 2024 in Bremen. It was a joint meeting with the working group 'Corrosion and corrosion protection of aluminium and magnesium) of the German society for corrosion protection (GfKORR).

Malte Burchardt presented results on “Chromate replacement and further requirements for corrosion testing - Modelling as an opportunity?”. The talk provided a generic overview of VIPCOAT activities, focusing on materials modeling and characterization activity starting from selection of corrosion inhibitors (APP1) and finalizing by cyclic corrosion tests prediction (APP4).

Time for experiments!

New coatings development and testing have been progressed by all partners involved in the experimental work: three companies, Smallmatek (SMT), AkzoNobel and AIRBUS, and two academia, TU Delft and Hereon. The partners have prepared a range of coatings to support the modelling activities for APP2 and validation activities in APP3 and APP4.

AkzoNobel has been preparing additional model coatings for early stage leaching experiments, microstructural characterization and incorporation of the best performing corrosion inhibitor -loaded LDH containers. The LDH nano-containers have been produced by SMT. The LDH containers were loaded in such a way that each coating had an equal molar loading of corrosion inhibitor at a Pigment Volume Concentration (PVC) of 30%. All samples were successfully prepared, applied and are currently in test.

TU Delft has analysed the behaviour of corrosion inhibitors by first screening them according to their electrochemical performance. This laid the foundation for training a predictive machine learning algorithm that aims to discover the performance of new inhibitor candidates in-silico.

For the generation of data AIRBUS has conducted experiments to assess the leaching performance from primers loaded with Lithium (Li) and Magnesium (Mg) and are evaluating the new coatings by standard cyclic corrosion tests.

Samples with a PVC of 30% and high thickness have been used. Among these there was a set of samples with topcoat, without topcoat as well as one without topcoat that has been sanded before the leaching experiment.

Hereon provided validation of modelling results using SVET electrochemical measurements. For these purposes the preparation of chromate-free industrially relevant samples was necessary. The samples produced for this work were supplied and treated by AIRBUS to aerospace standard and sent to AkzoNobel for coating application.

Intensive and effective collaboration of all partners will be reported in some scientific papers and contributions for EUROCORR 2024, which are currently under preparation for the publications.