Please see details below of a 12 month placement offered at AkzoNobel Performance Coatings, Gateshead. To apply please send CV and covering letter to Richard Ramsden (contact details below).
Background
We coat surfaces which are exposed to the elements for large amount of time in challenging environments – Singapore, China, Korea etc. We then overcoat these surfaces with fresh coatings to provide protection (e.g. anticorrosion). One of the major problems with this is that the adhesion of fresh paint can fail, if the underlying surface chemistry has changed (i.e. weathered). In order to understand this, one of my colleagues embarked on a really ambitious program of coating panels in multiple locations around the world, measuring the surfaces with a hand-held FTIR spectrometer, overcoating the surfaces and then testing the adhesion.
The upshot of this is a large set of data which shows the degradation of the surface in a range of environments and how overcoating is affected. The problem here is that we don’t have the skills to be able to fully exploit this.
The plan
1. We have a large bunch of Excel/CSV files which contain FTIR spectra of all the surfaces. We need to pull all these together into a database. This is complex as it has a temporal element (each panel was measured multiple times),
2. This database can be interrogated, models build to express the degradation of surfaces over time, and resulting adhesion pass/fail. These models may include top coat, bottom coat, length of exposure, IR spectra trace, location etc.
3. Build a proof-of-concept system which can ingest new spectra (with some associated data), append it to the database and provide a prediction on overcoating time.
4. If time allows: pulling local environmental conditions into modelling. We measure a large range of environmental data at each of our sites (wind, rain, temperature humidity etc.) which may go some way to improving models.
Ultimately I can see this as being part of a real service we can offer to customers – namely, we scan a series of surfaces and recommend products or overcoating schedules based on their degradation.
Richard Ramsden
Section Leader Functional Surfaces
Performance Coatings Research
T +44 (0) 191 401 2455
F +44 (0) 191 438 3208
E richard.ramsden@akzonobel.com
AkzoNobel Performance Coatings
www.akzonobel.com