PhD Studentship: Tribocorrosion of marine systems and infrastructure

Marine infrastructure and transport both old and new has to survive the harsh environment they operate in. There is little understanding of degradation processes when mechanical wear and corrosion combine which results in material/coating section and life predictions of key components or entire asserts are inaccurate or under predict the damage actually seen in service. The availability and remaining life of assets is crucial to the economics and impact assets have. Therefore, this project would aim to understand the fundamentals of tribocorrosion of marine systems and infrastructure to do some predictive modelling based on existing analytical approaches of wear and corrosion but these would be developed in reaction to using in-situ EIS and electrochemical noise measurements from allied tests with corroboration on reactions occurring in the seawater environment by ICP or other ion release measurements such as micro electrophoresis and micro-pH. This hits the digital and green tribology agendas for smart health monitoring of assets. Experiments would use existing tribology test facilities in nCATS.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Robert JK Wood, nCATS research group, Email: r.wood@soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 4881.

This project is being run in participation with the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (View Website). For details of our 4 Year PhD programme and further projects, please see http://www.cdt-sis.soton.ac.uk/