Paint Additive for Early Detection of Corrosion

The corrosion of military equipment and facilities is a significant and ongoing problem. In total, corrosion cost the Department of Defense $23 billion annually and is the number one cost driver in military life-cycle costs. The effective monitoring of aircraft structural health is essential to maintaining safe operation, particularly as aircraft are retained for ever longer service periods. The early diagnosis of corrosion could minimize costs and promote mission readiness. In this project TDA will develop a new additive that contains a pH sensitive indicator that can be interrogated by a non-destructive method. This technique can detect changes in components at very low concentrations and will therefore alert military personnel to corrosion at the earliest onset. The additive is based on a carrier material that TDA has already demonstrated to be compatible with military specification coatings; in previous work we have incorporated it into paints in place of inert pigments with no adverse consequence to other paint properties. In the Phase I project we demonstrated the feasibility using this novel paint additive couple with a commercial non-destructive interrogation method to detect to changes in a coating. In the Phase II program we will optimize the corrosion sensing paint additive technology and all required hardware and software so the technology meets all Armys requirements.