Open Access

As a result of increasing needs and shrinking resources, aquaculture is gaining progressively significance in the recent years. Ecological issues such as negative effects on the ecological system due to the high fish density in the farms, the use of copper as antifouling strategy etc. are very present, particularly regarding the increasing number of fish going to be produced in farms in the future. Current trends focus on larger farms operated offshore. To make these farms working safe and economical, reliability has to be improved and maintenance costs need to be reduced. Also, alternatives with higher mechanical strength compared to current textile net materials as well as common metal wires might be necessary. In the last years, a new net system made of high strength duplex stainless steel wires with environmentally friendly antifouling properties suitable for offshore applications was developed. The first nets are operating for one year now as predator protection (i.e. seals) for fish farms and show a good performance in cleaning capability and predator protection. But in the real usage, some corrosion effects in the contact points of the net made of duplex stainless steel 1.4362 occur which were not observed in preliminary tests in laboratory and at different test sites around the world. These corrosion effects endanger the sustainable success of the net system. In this work, the observed corrosion effects are investigated. A laboratory test, which simulates the movement in the contact points of the net, was developed. Two pieces of wire are bent in the middle and get stucked into each other. One wire is fixed at both ends and the second wire is fixed on one end. On the other end, a circular movement with 1-2 rps and a 1 cm displacement is applied. The movement generates friction between the wires and the passive layer will be locally damaged. When the movement stops, a repassivation starts. The passivity breakdown and the repassivation were measured with electrochemical techniques. During the friction phase, when the surface will be activated, the open circuit potential breaks down. When the friction stops, the OCP increases. Between the movement phases, measurements of critical pitting potential were done. Thereby the quality of repassivation was investigated. The tests were done in a 3% sodium chloride solution. Different temperatures were tested as well as the influence of air saturation and low oxygen content.