Abstract
The objective of this research contract, for the Department of the Environment, was to assess the behaviour of the various primer types, commonly used on structural steel in the special environment under road bridges. In the first instance unrusted steel was used in order to reduce the number of variables. The work has shown that even in this sheltered situation the protection afforded by primers is dependent on the water resisting qualities of the binder as well as on the inhibitive pigment used. The results also demonstrated that, by choice of a particularly aggressive site (Norfolk Bridge, Shoreham), assessments of relative performance of different primers could be made almost as rapidly as, and more reliably than, by artificial laboratory tests. Further work is in hand to explore the effects of paint binder more thoroughly and to assess the effects of rust contamination before blast cleaning and priming.
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