It is clear that control of corrosion plays a major part in the safe operation and maintenance of a double hulled tanker.
Conventional steel designs, with their inherent complexity are costly to protect and maintain.
This is due to the large surface areas, difficulty of access and large numbers of points for potential initiation of coating breakdown.
Today’s double hulled tankers are not known to be suffering from structural failures.
However, the effort required to design and construct intersections with good service performance adds considerably to the production cost and the problems have not been completely eliminated.
