Composites Technology Being Developed to Protect Wood Piers from Shipworm Damage

University of Maine engineers are at work on a new composites technology that may protect piers in coastal waters from shipworm attack. Although in its early stages, the research has attracted a $110,577 two-year grant from the Maine Sea Grant Program and participation from a Maine composites manufacturing company, the Kenway Corporation of Augusta.

“Our experimental approach is to create a shield that is reinforced with fiberglass fabric in a polymer that is durable in the marine environment,” says Roberto Lopez-Anido, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a member of the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center (AEWC).

In laboratory tests at AEWC, Lopez-Anido and his colleagues have exposed the material to sea water, weather extremes and mechanical stresses. “We're going to call the material a FRP Shield. It will provide strength to the wood pile and protection from marine borers such as shipworms.” FRP stands for fiber-reinforced polymer.

Also working on the project are Tom Sandford of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Barry Goodell of the Department of Forest Management; Habib Dagher of the AEWC; Tony Michael, a civil engineering graduate student from Cyprus; and Todd Wilson, an undergraduate in mechanical engineering technology from Orono.

Some of the materials being tested at the Center have been provided by the Kenway Corporation. Kenway is a manufacturer of corrosion resistant fiber reinforced polymer pipes, flanges and other custom molded products. “This is a technology that can be readily moved to industry,” says Lopez-Anido, “and we want to compare how a business uses it with what we do in the lab.”

Kenway and Lopez-Anido are also cooperating in development of a new composite bridge between the towns of Union and Washington in Knox County. That bridge is scheduled to be installed this fall.

Lopez-Anido specializes in the application of FRP composites to highway bridges. The new pier shield is unique, he says, in the manner in which it is fabricated and applied to a piling. The shield is designed to be placed around a piling from the mud to the high tide line.

“We don't apply the shield above the high tide line because of problems with fungi that attack wood pilings in that area. We need to let the piling breathe, and the shield above the high tide line could make the fungi problem even worse,” says Lopez-Anido.

Other researchers have developed and tested plastic pilings in Maine coastal waters, but those materials have proven to be too brittle. Concrete piling can also be used, but wood remains the material of choice. None of the new FRP Shields have yet been installed on a piling to test performance under actual operating conditions. FRP materials are used in existing commercial piling products that consist of FRP surrounding a concrete core, says Lopez-Anido. Shipworms have been a scourge of wooden ships and piers for centuries, but until recently, they were unknown in Maine's cold coastal waters. Last year, shipworms caused millions of dollars in damages to harbor and aquaculture facilities in Maine.

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