Stanislav Gorb

Marine biofouling is a serious cause of repair and maintenance costs in shipping, and at marine off-shore installations in general. To reduce economic expenses and ecological pressure, environment-friendly antifouling surfaces are urgently required. Within this project we aim at (1) improving previously found foulingrelease surfaces with certain surface microstructures which showed very strong reduction of biofouling under static field trail conditions and (2) to provide strategies to overcome known issues with the applicability of fouling release coatings such as costeffectiveness, durability and processability. For this purpose, preselected antifouling surfaces will be functionalized by different physico-chemical processes to further improve biofouling capabilities which will be evaluated in an already established static field trail setup. To enhance the durability and processability of this surfaces different techniques will be used to replicate those surfaces from different composite materials to allow enhanced resistance to mechanical loads and adhesion to maritime substrates. While continuously exchanging information with key stakeholders a product-near non-toxic antifouling surface prototype is expected.