Railcar exteriors are a challenging end-use application for industrial maintenance coatings due to the factors of cost, long-term performance, productivity and environmental regulations. With direct-to-metal polyaspartic urethane coatings, railcar owners can reduce costs and improve productivity without having to sacrifice long-term performance over traditional multi-coat epoxy polyurethane systems.

The advantages of polyaspartic coatings will be the focus of a presentation by Ahren Olson, market manager, Corrosion Protection at Covestro LLC at the Mechanical Association Railcar Technical Services (MARTS) Technical Conference in conjunction with Railway Interchange 2017, the largest combined railway exhibition and technical conference in North America. On Tuesday, September 19 at 8:30 a.m., Olson will cover several topics including an overview of polyaspartic coatings and present a real-world case study of polyaspartic coatings on a series of hopper cars originally painted in 2002.

The polyaspartic application replaced a multi-coat epoxy polyurethane system and provided excellent application in hard-to-coat areas along with an approximately 30 percent savings in time and labor. Polyaspartic coatings can increase throughput in painting operations by reducing the number of layers and providing quick drying characteristics.

After 15 years of service, the polyaspartic coatings on the hopper cars were evaluated and proved to be performing very well from a corrosion protection standpoint, showing less than 0.1 percent rusting. Based on this field experience, the 8-10 mils DFT of polyaspartic coating on this series of hoppers cars is expected to last 20-25 years.






Photo courtesy Covestro