INFRASTRUCTURE

Protecting the Backbone of the Modern World

Roadways, bridges, tunnels, water storage tanks, railway tracks, transmission towers, dams, and stormwater systems all share the same vulnerability: they’re metallic or reinforced structures now operating well past the service life they were originally designed for. What that means in practice, and where cathodic protection and advanced materials fit into extending or rebuilding these assets, is covered below.

Advanced Materials for New Structures

Not every aging structure is a retrofit candidate. Some have exceeded any reasonable service extension, or the original design no longer meets current load, seismic, or capacity requirements. For those projects, the rebuild itself is an opportunity to choose materials that hold up better than what went into the original structure decades ago.

BADGERADVANCED Magnesium is one of the lightest structural metals available, with roughly two-thirds the density of aluminum and a quarter the density of steel. That weight reduction adds up in places that aren't obvious at first. Lighter vehicles reduce the wear and fatigue loading that roads and bridges absorb over their service life, and lighter structural and cladding components reduce the dead load a new structure has to carry, which can mean smaller foundations, lighter reinforcement, and lower long-term maintenance loads on the structure itself.

BADGERADVANCED Titanium addresses a different part of the problem. Titanium’s corrosion resistance comes from a stable, self-healing oxide layer that forms on the surface, rather than an external system layered on top of a base metal. In structural applications where steel would otherwise need ongoing CP, coating maintenance, or eventual replacement due to section loss, titanium components can eliminate that maintenance cycle entirely. In some high-corrosion environments, engineers now specify titanium reinforcement bar in place of standard or epoxy-coated steel rebar, removing the corrosion mechanism at the source instead of protecting against it after the fact. Titanium’s strength-to-weight ratio also runs well ahead of steel, so structural members can often be downsized without giving up load capacity, a meaningful advantage in rebuild projects where weight budgets are tight.

BADGERADVANCED Graphene adds a third path, applied as a coating rather than a structural material. Graphene’s two-dimensional structure forms a dense barrier that is nearly impermeable to oxygen and moisture, the two inputs corrosion needs to get started. Applied to steel reinforcement, structural coatings, or tank and vessel interiors, a graphene coating can supplement or in some cases reduce reliance on a traditional cathodic protection or paint system, particularly in submerged or buried conditions where microbially induced corrosion (MIC) is a factor. It is a coating-level intervention rather than a material substitution, which makes it a practical fit for structures that are not candidates for a full rebuild but need better corrosion resistance than the original specification included.

None of these three materials is a wholesale replacement for steel and concrete across infrastructure generally. They make sense in specific cases, where weight, corrosion exposure, or long-term maintenance cost outweigh the higher upfront material cost, and that calculation is one more engineers are running as the repair backlog grows.

For structures headed toward a full rebuild, ACC’s materials team works directly with engineering teams to identify where magnesium, titanium, or graphene coatings fit a project’s load, corrosion, and budget requirements, from initial material selection through custom-fabricated components.

Extending Infrastructure Lifespan

American Carbon is working to change the perception that corrosion is just something infrastructure has to live with. Most of the infrastructure holding this country together wasn’t built for how long we’re now asking it to last. It came in three distinct waves: New Deal projects in the 1930s, the post-WWII suburban expansion, and the Interstate Highway System that followed the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act. Almost all of it was designed to a roughly 50-year service life. The oldest of those assets are now approaching a century in service, and even the newest highway-era structures have already passed 70 years. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives dams, levees, roads, and stormwater systems a “D” grade nationally, with an estimated $6 trillion repair backlog attached.

None of that means the structures have to be replaced. In most cases, replacement is not realistic, financially or logistically. The more common path, and the more cost-effective one, is retrofitting cathodic protection onto structures that were never designed with it in the originally. That work comes with its own constraints: unknown coating condition, decades of patched repairs, and infrastructure that cannot come offline for construction.

Corrosion on these assets does not confine itself to one obvious failure point. It shows up in reinforced concrete bridge decks, tunnels and culverts, water storage tanks, railway structures, transmission towers, dams and levees, and stormwater systems, each with a different exposure profile, different access constraints, and a different anode strategy.

Choosing the right system comes down to a handful of variables: how much structural life is left in the asset relative to the design life of the CP system going onto it, soil resistivity across the structure, how the system will be monitored over decades of service, and whether galvanic or impressed current protection fits the electrical load. Get any of these wrong and the system either underprotects the asset or gets massively overbuilt for what it actually needs.

American Carbon anode lines are built around exactly this range of retrofit conditions. BADGERCONNECT Magnesium Anodes handle galvanic protection on smaller or more remote assets where impressed current is not practical. BADGERCOAT Mixed Metal Oxide (MMO) Anodes are built for impressed current systems that need to hold up over decades of service in hard to reach locations. On infrastructure that shares a right-of-way with high-voltage AC transmission lines, BADGERCORD Zinc Ribbon Anodes address a problem a purely DC-focused CP design will miss: localized AC corrosion induced by the shared corridor.

Most of this infrastructure would still be standing without a corrosion problem if cathodic protection had been part of the original spec instead of an afterthought. As long as a structure is still functional, protecting it costs less than waiting and eventually replacing it.