This is a practical guide to Surface Science for researchers working in the Shipbuilding Industry.
In this all-new guide you’ll learn all about:
Let’s dive right in.
The shipbuilding industry encompasses both the engineering behind ship development and the industrial sectors responsible for completing and repairing ships. This complex field involves various sectors, including the construction of vessels for commercial shipping, naval defense, and recreational boating. Surface properties such as contact angle, sliding angle, surface tension, and surface energy are crucial for ensuring ships’ integrity, performance, and longevity.
We use the following surface properties to understand the behavior of Shipbuilding products and improve their quality.
Sample Image taken from Droplet Lab Tensiometer.
Young – Laplace Method
Polynomial Method
Ideally, when we place a drop on a solid surface, a unique angle exists between the liquid and the solid surface. We can calculate the value of this ideal contact angle (the so-called Young’s contact angle) using Young’s equation. In practice, due to surface geometry, roughness, heterogeneity, contamination, and deformation, the contact angle value on a surface is not necessarily a single consistent value but rather falls within a range. The upper and lower limits of this range are known as the advancing and receding contact angles, respectively. The values of advancing and receding contact angles for a solid surface are highly sensitive to many parameters, such as temperature, humidity, homogeneity, and minor contamination of the surface and liquid. For example, the advancing and receding contact angles of a surface can differ at different locations.
Practical surfaces and coatings naturally show contact angle hysteresis, indicating a range of equilibrium values. When we measure static contact angles, we get a single value within this range. Solely relying on static measurements poses problems, like poor repeatability and incomplete surface assessment regarding adhesion, cleanliness, roughness, and homogeneity.
In practical applications, we need to understand how easily a liquid spreads (advancing angle) and how easily it is removed (receding angle), such as in painting and cleaning. Measuring advancing and receding angles offers a holistic view of liquid-solid interaction, unlike static measurements, which yield an arbitrary value within the range.
This insight is crucial for real-world surfaces with variations, roughness, and dynamics, aiding industries like cosmetics, materials science, and biotechnology in designing effective surfaces and optimizing processes.
Learn how Contact Angle measurement is done on our Tensiometer
For a more complete understanding of Contact Angle measurement, read our Contact Angle measurement: The Definitive Guide
These reference measurements show how deionized water wets four standard substrates measured with the Droplet Lab Dropometer. Use them as visual and numerical benchmarks when you're checking your own sample preparation, treatments, and chemistry.
Full contact angle and surface energy datasets (including additional liquids and statistics) are available on our dataset hub.
The droplet images above are taken from the same benchmark series as our open dataset. For each substrate and probe liquid we report:
● Advancing and receding contact angles (and hysteresis)
● Derived surface energy (SFE) values based on multi-liquid measurements
● Measurement conditions, uncertainties, and sample preparation details
Comparing your own droplet shapes and angles against these references is a fast way to spot contamination, treatment drift, or unexpected changes in wettability.
This property measures the force that acts on the surface of a liquid, aiming to minimize its surface area.
Sample Image taken from Droplet Lab Tensiometer
Dynamic Surface Tension
Dynamic surface tension differs from static surface tension, which refers to the surface energy per unit area (or force acting per unit length along the edge of a liquid surface).
Static surface tension characterizes the equilibrium state of the liquid interface, while dynamic surface tension accounts for the kinetics of changes at the interface. These changes could involve the presence of surfactants, additives, or variations in temperature, pressure, and composition at the interface.
When to use Dynamic Surface Tension Measurement
Dynamic surface tension is essential for processes that involve rapid changes at the liquid-gas or liquid-liquid interface, such as droplet and bubble formation, coalescence (change in surface area), the behavior of foams, and the drying of paints (change in composition, e.g., evaporation of solvent). It is measured by analyzing the shape of a hanging droplet over time.
Dynamic surface tension applies to various industries, including cosmetics, coatings, pharmaceuticals, paint, food and beverage, and industrial processes, where understanding and controlling the behavior of liquid interfaces is essential for product quality and process efficiency.
Learn how Surface Tension measurement is done on our Tensiometer
For a more complete understanding of Surface Energy measurement, read our Surface Tension measurement: The Definitive Guide
Sample Image taken from Droplet Lab Tensiometer
Learn how Surface Energy measurement is done on our Tensiometer
For a more complete understanding of Surface Energy measurement, read our Surface Energy measurement: The Definitive Guide
For benchmark contact angle and surface energy values on glass, nylon, PMMA, and Teflon, see the Open Benchmark Data panel above or visit our Dataset Hub for full CSV downloads.
The sliding angle measures the angle at which a liquid film slides over a solid surface. It is commonly employed to assess the slip resistance of a surface.
Sample Image taken from Droplet Lab Tensiometer
Learn how Sliding Angle measurement is done on our Tensiometer
For a more complete understanding of Sliding Angle measurement, read our Sliding Angle Measurement: The Definitive Guide
Within the Shipbuilding industry, several case studies exemplify the advantages of conducting surface property measurements.
Challenge: A ship painting company faced uneven surface coatings due to the coating fluid's viscosity, surface tension, and the substrate's contact angle.
Solution: The company’s engineering team discovered that using a coating liquid with a contact angle less than 90° caused a pinning effect, reducing surface unevenness. By adjusting the contact angle to create this effect, they mitigated the impact of uneven coatings, leveraging the interplay between fluid viscosity and the substrate's surface energy.
Challenge: The superhydrophobic coatings used in shipbuilding were expensive and complicated to fabricate.
Solution: Researchers developed cost-effective, mechanically stable micro/nano superhydrophobic coatings by combining laser processing with low-surface energy materials. These coatings, exhibiting excellent hydrophobicity through contact angle and sliding angle measurements, provided durable water repellency, simplifying the superhydrophobic coating process.
Challenge: Cargo shipping companies needed to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.
Solution: Companies adopted innovative hull coatings with low surface energy and sliding angles to minimize friction with seawater. By enhancing hydrodynamic efficiency, these coatings led to significant fuel savings, reduced operational costs, and a lower carbon footprint. Droplet Lab's portable instrument can enable accurate measurement of surface energy and sliding angles, ensuring these coatings' effectiveness in real maritime conditions.
Challenge: Aluminum 7075, despite its high strength, suffered from corrosion, limiting its use in subsea industries.
Solution: The research team experimented with bare aluminum and oil-impregnated anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) surfaces. Salt spray and pressure tests revealed that the oil-impregnated AAO maintained a high contact angle, significantly improving corrosion resistance. This modification made Aluminum 7075 viable for subsea applications.
Challenge: Slippery deck surfaces posed safety concerns.
Solution: To enhance deck surface hydrophobicity, engineers performed contact angle measurements on various surface treatments. Optimizing these treatments increased hydrophobicity, reducing slip risks in wet conditions and improving safety.
If you are interested in implementing these or any other applications, please contact us.
In an industry where precision reigns supreme, how can Shipbuilding manufacturers ensure their products withstand scrutiny? The answer lies in standards and guidelines: the compass that guides them through the complex maze of quality and performance.
A destructive coating-adhesion outcome test: you cut through the cured coating to the substrate, apply pressure-sensitive tape, remove it, and classify how much coating detaches. For a more actionable shipyard workflow, pair D3359 with an upstream wettability gate (e.g., water contact angle at a fixed timestamp and optional surface free energy trend) to detect surface-prep drift before coating.
Use D3359 to confirm the coating system meets the project’s required adhesion class after cure on representative panels/areas.
Use D3359 when ratings trend down, and use contact angle/SFE trending to quickly triage whether the likely issue is surface readiness (cleaning/treatment/contamination) vs coating/cure changes.
D3359 remains the adhesion outcome test; contact angle/SFE are surface-sensitive indicators that help you catch risk early and diagnose drift, but they do not “guarantee” adhesion. Any numeric wettability gates must be calibrated to your specific substrate + pretreatment + coating system by correlating to D3359 outcomes.
We hope this guide showed you how to apply surface science in the Shipbuilding industry.
Now we’d like to turn it over to you:
Feel free to leave a comment below—we’d love to hear from you.
