Sustainable Coatings by Rational Design, SusCoRD, is a prosperity partnership between the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool co-funded by AkzoNobel and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC: EP/S004963/1). This multi-disciplinary project, which runs from the years 2018 to 2024 aims to develop the tools for creating new and improved protective coatings.
The aim of SusCoRD is to essentially tell us “how paint works”. The SusCoRD Prosperity Partnership addresses fundamental research questions concerning the formulation, testing and field performance of corrosion protective organic coatings.
“We aim to connect the physicochemical properties of protective organic coatings with their service performance in order to enable the development of process and formulation models such that novel, environmentally sustainable, materials solutions can be rapidly developed by the application of digital predictive design”
The five-year programme is led by Prof. Stuart Lyon, The University of Manchester and Prof. Anthony Ryan, The University of Sheffield. It combines mechanistic insight from advanced characterisation with machine learning of historic test data to deliver a framework for the rational design of novel coating formulations. It brings together:
- Market-leading protective coatings for marine, transport and industry (AkzoNobel)
- World-leading research in corrosion protection (University of Manchester), polymer interfaces (University of Sheffield) and machine learning (University of Liverpool)
At present, the development cycle for new corrosion protective organic coatings is slow, evolutionary, and reliant on extensive testing with trial-and-error empiricism. This programme will, for the first time, use a multi-scale analytical and modelling framework to connect physiochemical properties with performance that enable the development of process and formulation models such that novel, environmentally sustainable materials solutions can be rapidly developed by the application of digital predictive design.
The academic institutions (Universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool) bring together world-leading capabilities in corrosion science, materials characterisation, polymer science and machine learning and have worked with AkzoNobel and its predecessor bodies for over 30 years.
The Prosperity Partnership delivers a project of sufficient scale and focus to develop a step-change in the mechanistic understanding of corrosion protective coatings leading to improved, more environmentally friendly, paints and a more rapid development cycle. The partnership has strong links with end users including: Airbus, Crown, and Tata Steel.
Find out more at: http://bit.ly/106tN9G
Mid Term Review -Highlights
Starting in 2018, this 5-year research partnership between RCUK and AkzoNobel with the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, and Liverpool will enable for the 1st time a fundamental mechanistic understanding of how the performance of corrosion protective organic coatings arises – essentially it will tell us “how paint works”. Overall the project will deliver understanding and tools that underpin the rapid-to-market development of environmentally sustainable protective organic coatings by rational design.
