Service life prediction of façade paint coatings in old buildings

The financial resources available for infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation are always limited, creating a need for efficient resource management and for the ability to predict maintenance actions throughout the infrastructure service period. In the context of bridge management, management systems have been developed and are already implemented around the world. Due to a much larger variety of maintenance problems and to a reduced number of buildings per owner, building management systems are still quite rare. In fact efficient methodologies for service life prediction of building materials still need to be developed.This paper presents and tests a service life prediction methodology, based on the statistical analysis of anomalies obtained from the inspection of in-use buildings and the corresponding degradation curves obtained from deterministic models. The method was applied to the service life prediction of paint coatings in old buildings’ façades and considers the quantification of the defect associated to paint peeling. The influence of five construction/environment degradation factors on the behavior of paint coatings over time is also analyzed.

▸ Service life prediction methodology for façade paint coatings in old buildings. ▸ Data collected from inspection of in-use buildings, five degradation factors studied. ▸ The paint peeling defect is studied, being quantified for each building. ▸ Paint films with thickness above 400 μm show improved performance over thinner films. ▸ West facing coatings present worst performance when compared to other orientations.