Design of biosourced and self-healing protective coatings for the marine environment and studies of their durability
Supervisors: CARRIERE Pascal, BERLIOZ Sophie, Emmanuel Richaud - Laboratoire PIMM de l’ENSAM, Hajjoul Houssam - Laboratoire MIO
Abstract:
Marine renewable energies are intended to operate for 20 to 30 years in a relatively aggressive marine environment (UV, humidity, etc.). A central problem for these technologies concerns the ageing resistance of their composite material blades, which can reach 80 m, and notably their protective coatings, usually based on epoxide resin, which has yet to be controlled on this time scale.
Epoxies constitute a vast family of thermosetting polymers whose members differ in the nature of the prepolymer, its hardener, which then governs the viscosity, the reactivity of the reactive mixture and the short- and long-term properties of the cured mixture. They are typically reserved for high performance markets, where ageing issues are costly and inspection and maintenance costs are critical.
The objective here is to develop new ranges of partially to fully biobased epoxies, which include extended features as self-repair and in situ non-destructive testing by incorporating fluorescence probes specific to a degradation mode (physical, chemical or mechanical).
This research is supported by the expertise of the MAPIEM Laboratory of the University of TOULON on the development of epoxy resins, control of vitrimer properties, selection and incorporation of fluorescent tracers and characterisation of the coatings produced. The PIMM laboratory of Arts et Métiers - ParisTech, provides its expertise in polymer ageing, particularly in thermal and mechanical ageing. The integration of experimental data from this work, particularly in fluorescence, will feed their approach to analytical modelling of these ageings.
