[O26]-Anticorrosive coatings degradation: Comparison between in-lab accelerated tests and field exposure

While the role of anticorrosive coatings is to protect a structure from its environment, they themselves degrade over time facing that very harsh environment. The lifetime of anticorrosive coatings is usually assessed by means of accelerated tests in laboratories. However, such tests do not always reflect real life conditions, and field exposure tests are still needed. There is therefore an important need of finding accelerated tests that could emulate the condition of a real site exposure. In this work, results of the degradation of the epoxy coated samples exposed in different environments have been compared. Exposure environments include in-lab acceleration tests by adopting the accelerated ageing method (ISO 12944-9:2018) combining UV, condensation, salt spray and freezing conditions, and immersion tests in salt water as well as cyclic exposure. Additionally, field exposure was carried out in a marine exposure site in Centro Tecnologico CTC, Santander (Spain). The degradation of the samples was evaluated by means of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and profilometry.