Corrosion Indicating Coatings for Aircraft Bilges and Wheel Wells

Aircraft bilge and landing gear wheel wells experience substantial corrosion because of the aggressive environments that they experience. The early diagnosis of corrosion in these locations could minimize costs and improve mission readiness. What is needed is a new method to visually identify such corrosion as it starts on the metal surface underneath the coating. In this project TDA developed a paint additive that provides visual feedback that indicates whether there is corrosion underneath the coating. Our new corrosion indicating additive is based on a carrier material that TDA has already demonstrated to be compatible with military specification coatings; in previous work we incorporated it into paints with no adverse consequences to the paints properties.In this SBIR Phase I project TDA synthesized this novel corrosion detection additive and incorporated it into a coating. We then demonstrated the ability of the additive to provide visual feedback on the presence of corrosion underneath an aerospace coating.