MUST project received funding from European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013). MUST project started in 2008 and will be finishing in September, 2012. The MUST project video has been produced to give an overview of the project's goal, objectives and the main achievements, the MUST project partners have accomplished during the period of the MUST project.

Why the Concern?

The huge economic impact of environment aggressiveness and corrosion of metallic structures is a very important issue for Europe, which has lost more than €200 billion every year due to corrosion degradation of investments. Transportation is one of the most important industries for corrosion resistance. To meet this demand, application of organic coatings is a cost effective method of improving the corrosion protection and, therefore, the durability of metallic structures.Since 2008, the EU project ”MUST,” established with high European concerns to advance the protection against corrosion and similar defects, has been involved in the design, development, upscaling and application of novel multi-level protection systems like coatings and adhesives. The strategy is to respond to destructive conditions with self-healing reactions. This ability is expected to be most effective if it is reacting at certain stages of degradation with different healing processes. A significant improvement of the durability of protective coatings is evident if early stage degradation phenomena are recovered and, for example, decrease of the barrier properties of the coating is postponed to longer exposure times.

Advanced material protection

“MUST” is an extended multi-level protection approach combined within one system. The protective system reacts adequately to external impacts, and also responds to changes in their internal structure. Different damage prevention and reparation mechanisms are combined within the same system, which are used depending on the nature and the degree of impact from external environment. The multi-level self-healing concept is based on 4 levels of gradual active feedback to the environmental conditions:

• Incorporation of nanotraps and nanocontainers to absorb aggressive/corrosive species
• Use of water displacing compounds to be released from nanocontainers as soon as the first micro-defect appear in the coating polymer matrix.
• Release of polymerizing precursors entrapped in nanocapsules in order to form a new thin polymer film covering the damaged area and repair the layer by preventing crack propagation.
• Encapsulation of organic and inorganic corrosion inhibitors acting on demand, suppressing corrosion and delaminating processes occurring in open defects.

Who is the end-user?

The main target groups for the proposed solution are automotive, aerospace and maritime industries. A high industrial interest is demonstrated by the participation of main European industrial end-users and suppliers of coatings and adhesives for vehicles. “MUST” will considerably increase the life cycle of materials and therefore boost the competitive strength of the European transport industry.

The Multi-level protection approach will also open new opportunities for the application of modern light materials (magnesium and aluminum alloys) in transport industries.