Lessons Learned from Winter Season Application of Epoxy/Urethane Coating System for the Offshore Structure

Abstract Offshore structures employed in deep sea water are expected to endure about 25 years without any dry docking repair, requiring rather strict control of surface preparation, protective coating application and inspection, and so on. Recently, these facilities have been built in the Far East of Asia region. Consequently, it’s unavoidable to overcoat epoxy with epoxy or urethane under the winter condition. In the initial stage of the coating application, there were lots of coating problems such as peeling-off and retarded coating drying. In this study, we have evaluated two coating materials widely used for offshore structures to establish the coating procedures providing high quality and better workability under low temperature condition. We also investigated a main cause of adhesion failure for epoxy-urethane coating by developing a test method for detection of coating defect. This procedure enabled us to apply the coating system successfully on our offshore yard. Based on the comparative study on several different epoxy coating system, and proper solutions to reduce painting defects were provided for successful application at the yard.