IES - How paint works: the Forth Bridge and other stories
9th February 2027 6:30 pm
As a child I remember many Saturday mornings helping my dad wash his car. As he explained: “the dirt and salt needs to be washed off the paint because that’s what causes rusting”. Only later, after I had made my career in corrosion, did I understand what he meant.
Imagine living in a world without paint; what aspects of our civilisation would survive? Starting from the Forth Bridge (pictured), and with examples from the infrastructure, automotive and aerospace sectors, this talk provides an historical overview of protective coatings from antiquity to the present day. It explains how paints work, why they sometimes don’t work, and why modern corrosion protective organic coatings are smart, sustainable materials, critical in the protection of engineering and infrastructure assets and for extending their useful lifetimes.
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