Corrosion of metallic structures and products costs the UK around 3% of its GDP due to remediation, replacement and safety concerns. The automotive industry has led many technological advances in coatings technology enabling multi-year corrosion warranties on cars to become common place. The drive for light weighting to improve a vehicles carbon footprint has demanded that metallic systems become reduced in gauge thickness whilst providing the same (or better) structural strength and enhanced corrosion resistance.This talk will provide an insight into the development and corrosion assessment of a new generation of protective metallic coatings containing zinc, magnesium and aluminium. Traditional corrosion monitoring methods are well established and generally give a “bulk” prediction of corrosion performance. These techniques are now complemented by state-of-the-art methods developed at Swansea University that evaluate corrosion at high resolutions in a time resolved manner. These techniques can explore the corrosion behavior of materials down to a microstructural level and provide accurate mechanistic and kinetic insights into corrosion.

Corrosion of metallic structures and products costs the UK around 3% of its GDP due to remediation, replacement and safety concerns. The automotive industry has led many technological advances in coatings technology enabling multi-year corrosion warranties on cars to become common place. The drive for light weighting to improve a vehicles carbon footprint has demanded that metallic systems become reduced in gauge thickness whilst providing the same (or better) structural strength and enhanced corrosion resistance.This talk will provide an insight into the development and corrosion assessment of a new generation of protective metallic coatings containing zinc, magnesium and aluminium. Traditional corrosion monitoring methods are well established and generally give a “bulk” prediction of corrosion performance. These techniques are now complemented by state-of-the-art methods developed at Swansea University that evaluate corrosion at high resolutions in a time resolved manner. These techniques can explore the corrosion behavior of materials down to a microstructural level and provide accurate mechanistic and kinetic insights into corrosion.