What Does
Service Life Mean?
Service life is the duration throughout which a product is used economically. It is the measure of the durability of assets and manufactured products. During the service life, a coating has the ability to protect a substrate and maintain its acceptable appearance, with no need for maintenance apart from cleaning. Different coatings have varying service lives, depending on their quality, application, and the surrounding environmental conditions. The elapse of service life can be determined by the ineffectiveness of the product that results from aging, frequent failures, and increased repair expenses.
Corrosionpedia Explains Service Life
The service life of a coating is associated with its quality, reliability, and durability. Better quality improves the service life. The quality can be controlled during production. On the other hand, reliability is connected to the development of the product. As the quality of the coatings in the industry varies with the manufacturer, service life may also differ. Coatings with longer service lives are better as they reduce maintenance costs.
With the knowledge of service life, you are in a position to prepare for maintenance or replacement in time. That's why service life prediction is performed on coatings before they are released to the industry. It helps in the evaluation and prediction of coating system failure, as well as the failure rates. Foreseeing the failure time gives us the opportunity to prevent failure by improving the service life or accommodate failure through various methods such as maintenance, redundancy, and tolerances.
The predicted service life of a coating system may change due to certain factors, including: the exposure environment, state of the substrate, or wrong application procedures. Therefore, inspection should be done regularly to ensure that a coating system performs as intended.