Investigation of Coating Effect to the Prevention of the Mechanical Properties Degradation Caused by Seawater Immersion in Marine Current Turbine Application

UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

GSOE9010 ENGINEERING RESEARCH SKILLS

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Investigation of Coating Effect to the Prevention of The Mechanical Properties Degradation caused by Seawater Immersion in Marine Current Turbine (MCT) Application

Handy Pratama

Student ID: z5132729

Postgraduate Student

School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

University of New South Wales, Australia

April 2018

Abstract

From 2009 to 2015, more than 100 Marine Current Turbine (MCT) projects with total capacity of 1200 MW is announced in Europe alone however, over 770 MW projects have been aborted due to reliability issue. The main challenge in the MCT technology is the mechanical properties degradation of the material during the operational phase. Throughout the operational phase, the MCT will be immerged by seawater therefore, the seawater will be absorbed then diffused into the material and subsequently modifying its mechanical properties such as flexural strength. Hence, the reliability of the MCT would decrease. One of the technique that could be utilized to maintain the MCT’s reliability by preventing the seawater inception into the material is coating.

The most common material utilized in MCT application is Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP). Some researchers have been carried out to investigate the effect of seawater immersion to the degradation of the mechanical properties of the CFRP. However, the experiments done by the previous researches is conducted on uncoated specimens. The objective of this research proposal is to investigate the effect of coating to the prevention of the mechanical properties degradation caused by the seawater immersion. The experiment will be conducted by immerging the coated CFRP specimens in a seawater tank then pump will be used to circulate the water flow to simulate the marine current. Several recently developed coating material for marine application for instance chitosan-zinc oxide (chitosan-ZnO) and Al2O3 will be utilized as the coating material. Throughout the experiment, the flexural strength of the specimen would be tested. By doing the experiment, the effect of coating to such degradation could be discovered hence, it could help to determine if coating able to address the reliability problem in MCT application.

Keyword: Marine Current Turbine, Mechanical Properties Degradation, Coating.

Contents

1. Literature Review        3

1.1 Introduction        3

1.2 Background of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) material usage in MCT Application.        3

1.3 Operational Challenge - Mechanical Properties Degradation due to Seawater Immersion        4

1.4 Possible Solution and Research Gap        5

2. Experimental Plan        6

2.1 Detail Methodology of The Experiment        7

3. Data Analysis Plan        9

4. Conclusion        11