| |
Many of the soldiers with painting duty for the U.S. Army may need to be reassigned if an innovation developed by researchers with the Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) becomes routinely used. The lab has been testing a paint and other surface coatings with special properties that make it "repaint" itself to cover scratches and dings. Program manager Ashok Kumar and project manager Dave Stephenson have now tested the technology in the field on steel water tanks and on pipes at a tank wash (like a jumbo car wash). They're now working on commercializing it not only for military use, but for use on automobiles, large steel structures such as bridges and oil rigs, air conditioning units, wooden houses, and many other potential applications. Dow Chemical is reportedly considering a partnership with the Army to develop the "self-healing" paints and coatings and bring it to the marketplace. The CERL research falls under the Defense Department's Corrosion Prevention and Control Program, which has a history of active involvement in tech transfer, according to a spokeswoman for the lab. And by already completing field testing and proof-of-concept, much of the risk has been eliminated for potential commercial developers, Kumar noted. "If companies think this makes sense to them, they'll run with it," he said. Kumar and Stephenson have been working on self-healing coatings for about a decade and have filed two patents. The technology relies on tiny capsules 60 to 100 microns in size -- considerably smaller than a grain of fine sand -- with liquid materials inside. The capsules developed by Kumar and Stephenson contain an anti-corrosive, which keeps a scratch, for instance, from rusting while a film-forming sealant, also part of the package, flows over the blemish and cures. When a surface gets scratched, dented or otherwise damaged, some of the capsules rupture and the healing materials are released. "The scratch will heal itself rather than expanding," Kumar said. The capsules don't yet work with all commercially available paints -- a chief remaining commercialization challenge -- though some off-the-shelf products, including those used in field testing, are already compatible. |
|
