Marine

A large proportion of the global population lives along the coast, because water plays a vital role in the transportation of goods, source of food, and recreation. Marine infrastructure is critical to support human activities in and around water. But marine structures face an exceptionally harsh environment that impacts their durability and service life. The corrosive nature of marine environments make it challenging to maintain and preserve these structures.

VCS Engineering is a world-leading corrosion science and mitigation firm, with an extensive experience in evaluating and rehabilitating diverse marine infrastructure.

Our Experience

Our engineers and technicians have worked on marine structures ranging from bulkhead walls, piles, waterfront structures, wharves, and other steel or concrete structures exposed to the marine environment. We’ve contributed expertise to projects like the Port of Tampa Bay’s port infrastructure, the Naval Kings Bay Nuclear Submarine Base for critical US defense, and the marinas in Panama City, Panama, impacted by the destructive Hurricane Michael. We work with the owner and design team to understand the structure's condition, its required service life, budget and maintenance constraints to ensure the structure is in a state of good repair.

Common marine services provided by VCS:

• Design of impressed current and galvanic cathodic protection systems
• Service life modeling
• Non-destructive evaluation, or non-destructive testing

Our corrosion engineers specialize in designing cathodic protection systems, which prevent corrosion deterioration of coastal assets. This includes developing galvanic and impressed current systems for various marine structures like bulkhead walls, piles, wharves, and other marine structures.  

We excel in service life modeling for marine structures. Evaluating the rate of deterioration becomes crucial for capital planning, enabling budget allocations for repairs or replacements.  

VCS has also used its non-destructive testing technologies to aid in understanding unknown conditions like pile embedment depth, mitigating risks associated with dredging operations that could compromise the stability of bulkheads or pier structures.