A new chocking compound designed to withstand physical and thermal shocks  expected in aggressive environments, is seen as particularly suitable for use in the shipping industry.

A chocking compound aims to ensure complete contact and load transfer between heavy machinery and its foundations and aims to reduce vibration and potential damage to the machine.

Mechanical seals and system manufacturer AESSEAL South Africa is the sole distributor of repair composite materials and protective coatings from manufacturer Belzona Polymerics and has supplied a range of industries with Belzona’s high-quality  polymeric epoxy coating and repair systems.

The new Belzona 7111 chocking compound, is said to exhibit high compressive, impact and vibration resistance and excellent creep properties.

AESSEAL South Africa highlights a number of benefits of Belzona 7111, including:

• It can be applied by contractors or by individual asset owners
• The material is a two-part, 100% solids epoxy
• It is pourable and self-levelling, meaning that it can be poured from one corner of the chock and flow into all areas. This helps to ensure ease-of-application as the equipment does not have to be completely removed in order to install the chock

ASSEAL South Africa outlines several repair options, with the most common being the use of a metallic shim – ranging from simple washers to high tolerance machined shims. It is noted, however, that metallic shims can be costly to manufacture and difficult to machine if the exact dimensions and shape are unknown, so another repair option is to use cementitious repair materials; however, if it is a concrete-based repair, then the same issues may occur.

A further suggested option is to use polymeric materials. The benefits of using liquid-applied shims are that hot work is not required, it is solvent-free, has high adhesion properties and is chemically-resistant – all of which help to ensure a long-term, durable solution.