Mechanical Damage

Mechanical Damage

In many developing country locations, a recurring problem is the mechanical damage to otherwise properly applied coatings due to handling abuse.

For most plants, structural steel is shop (off site) fabricated, loaded on trucks or ships, and delivered to the construction site for erection.  This is an important process because it can become quite expensive and time consuming to field repair coatings.  This can be even more true in locations with high humidity because a proper repair must be affected within the coating manufacturers indicated limitations.  This is sometimes hard to achieve.

An owner should likewise be concerned because a repaired coating system is never as durable as the original coating.  The first photo shows a typical "handling" problem.  The subsequent photos show poor repairs and unrepaired damage.  Both are so common, it seems normal.

One plant in Asia had structural steel and piping that was so abused with mechanical damage that the plant looked 15 years old even before COD.

Contractor Savings

Nothing.  It costs nothing to handle coated pipe/steel carefully.

Repair Costs

If all the repairs were affected, it would have cost several tens of millions of $.

Supporting Images: 

Mechanical Damage of structural steel installed about 24 months.

Mechanical Damage of structural steel due to beating with mallot during erection, most likely.

Damage probably from incorrect rigging during erection.

Coatings damaged during handling/erection.

Completely inadequate field repair of damaged coating.  Repair has already failed.