Coating or paints are the most common materials for protecting the metallic structural surfaces against corrosion. A marine coating is designed for tough exposures that prevent serious breakdown of the basic coating layer(s) despite abrasions, holidays, or imperfections in the coating. Overprotection from an impressed or sacrificial cathodic protection can cause blistering, saponification of organic coatings, oxide dissolution, and loss of coating adhesion, and coating failure. Several steps need to be executed to experience the benefits of marine coatings. The steps are: surface preparation, quality of the coating application, coating inspection and quality control and monitoring of coated structures. Degradation or impact damage of the topcoats occurs frequently in normal marine service. Multilayered polymeric coatings are permeable to air and moisture, resulting in coating degradation and ultimately substrate corrosion. Coatings for offshore structures may be similar to those coatings applied on ships, but the operational profiles of ships verses offshore structures differ considerably.
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