General Discussions

[LP]

Maintaining infrastructure in marine environments has its challenges but good design, materials and maintenance will result in decades of service.  South Channel Light is a good example; built in 1874, it only began to deteriorate after the light was turned off in 1985 and maintenance stopped.

Longevity that results from a massive maintenance expenditure, a budget item that in Australia is often described as defence's biggest single operating expense. The US DoD budget for conducting R&D into how to tackle corrosion is billion$ of dollars.

I spent five years about twelve years ago doing R&D into techniques just to reduce the corrosion in one part of the rotor assembly of Seahawk helicopters, moving parts made of specific corrosion resistant alloys that have to go through a full $50K rebuild annually due to corrosion, and those parts are built out of the very same alloy that are used in wind turbine rotors.