Engineering: Fully Funded M2A MSc by Research at Swansea: Direct to Metal Anti-Corrosive Coatings

Start date: October 2019

Supervisors: TBC

U-POL is a large UK based company, specializing in coatings and other repair products, primarily aimed at vehicle refinish and the automotive aftermarket. They have manufacturing facilities and an R&D centre in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire from where they export to over 100 countries around the world.

One of their major brands is RAPTOR, a versatile high-performance textured coating with a significant brand share and market awareness as a truck bed liner and vehicle customisation solution, being particularly well known in USA and Russia.

One of the key properties of a coating sold into this market is its ability to protect the underlying substrate (often mild steel) from corrosion. RAPTOR itself only offers barrier protection and contains no active anti-corrosive materials. To provide additional corrosion resistance it is recommended to either use an acid etch or an epoxy primer prior to applying RAPTOR, but this adds an additional process step, which adds additional cost, both in terms of product and more significantly in terms of labour.

This project aims to understand the failure mode of the product RAPTOR with respect to corrosion and then to assess different potential solutions to improving performance, to enable the product to be recommended for use direct to metal without use of a primer, ideally with a performance warranty.

Early screening work has been conducted on possible solutions, including inclusion of different anti-corrosive pigments and improvement of barrier properties through addition of flexibilization additives.

The Research Engineer will:

• Build on early screening work by completing testing of the most promising routes and working collaboratively with the industrial team on formulating better solutions.
• At its site in Wellingborough, U-POL has a large laboratory where the formulating work and practical application work (spray application of the coating) can be completed, complementary to the analytical and testing equipment available at Swansea.

We welcome applications from candidates with an Engineering or Physical Science degree (minimum level 2:1), or a combination of degree and equivalent relevant experience to the same level, to join the M2A community of research engineers.

Please visit our website for more information.

The scholarship covers the full costs of UK/EU tuition fees, plus a tax free stipend of £12,500 per annum for a period of one year.