Courtesy Photo | From left: Armen Kvryan, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division’s...... read more read more
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Training Sailors to tackle corrosion on Navy vessels is the goal of a new project that Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) has launched with Clemson University.
The Port Hueneme, California-based command recently selected the public research institution in Clemson, South Carolina, to develop virtual reality (VR)-based training targeting shipboard corrosion under the Naval Engineering Education Consortium (NEEC) program.
A $150,000-per-year NEEC grant will fund the work at Clemson. NSWC PHD can renew the agreement for up to three years.
Armen Kvryan, the command’s corrosion lead and NEEC director, said there’s a need for training modules tailored to Sailors, who are on the front lines of battling saltwater corrosion in the fleet.
Corrosion costs the U.S. Navy approximately $8 billion per year, more than half of which is related to ships and other naval vessels, according to Kvryan.
Courses on corrosion, which Kvryan described as “a difficult subject,” typically require prior knowledge in other areas, like material science and chemistry. The new training will drill down on the basics of corrosion and present it in an easy-to-understand manner for naval personnel who don’t have an educational background on those topics.
Kvryan said he expects the content to delve into identifying different types of corrosion — for instance, an orange spot is likely iron rust, while a white spot is probably aluminum corrosion — and how to treat them. The course would also cover pertinent topics like paints, coatings and protective oxidation layers — which workers often mistakenly scrape off, leaving bare metal that is more susceptible to corrosion.
This enhanced knowledge would help the Navy save time and money on dealing with corrosion, Kvryan said, and it would enable Sailors to more accurately characterize corrosion-related issues when they communicate with In-Service Engineering Agent personnel.
“It will get to the essentials of what Sailors need to know about corrosion, and deliver that in a very short time frame,” he said. “My goal is to give them, in one day, 50% more than they knew previously.”
While Kvryan knows corrosion — he holds a doctorate in the subject — he said he has struggled to teach it to Sailors in an engaging way, which is where the partnership with Clemson comes into play.
Immersive learning
Clemson brings expertise on both corrosion and VR to the NEEC project, according to Kvryan. The university offers courses on those subjects and operates a Corrosion Research Laboratory, which works on developing new technologies to mitigate damage due to corrosion.
“We know corrosion; we know VR,” said Amir Poursaee, a Clemson professor of civil engineering and materials science and engineering, and director of the Corrosion Research Laboratory. “We’re going to combine our forces for a new methodology to deliver a dynamic corrosion course.”
The VR aspect will provide “immersive learning” for Sailors, according to Anand Gramopadhye, dean of Clemson’s College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences and principal investigator of the organization that houses the Clemson University Center for Workforce Development.
“We can expose them to different scenarios where they have to make a judgment and use tools,” Gramopadhye said. “The idea is creating a skilled workforce that is consistently trained on the same data sets.”
Initially, Sailors involved in ship maintenance would take the corrosion course on VR headsets while visiting NSWC PHD. The goal would be to eventually expand its availability to other ports, Kvryan said.
Another factor in selecting Clemson was its plan for utilizing students in the project, according to Kvryan. That includes engaging with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, and other organizations in an effort to involve veteran students.
Poursaee said he expects to hire two to three students to develop the corrosion curriculum and the VR component. The team will include graduate and undergraduate students, Gramopadhye added.
Kvryan said he was also impressed by the university leaders’ approach to the project as a partnership rather than a transactional relationship.
“They said let’s do this together,” Kvryan said. “They genuinely want to do good and help the warfighter.”
That motivation aligns with Clemson’s many years of experience working with all branches of the U.S. military, according to Gramopadhye.
“We have a deep history of Department of Defense research,” he said.
Tapping academia
The NEEC program funds research projects at all 10 Naval Sea Systems Command warfare centers and involves more than 50 universities across the country.
NSWC PHD requests proposals for NEEC projects via a procurement tool called broad agency announcements. A selection committee at the command reviews and grades the proposals to determine the winner. The corrosion project attracted proposals from about 20 universities.
Kvryan said that NEEC is an avenue for NSWC PHD to tap academia for efforts that the command doesn’t have the bandwidth to pursue in-house — particularly in the realm of research and development.
Another aim of the program is to develop and attract new professionals into the technical fields associated with U.S. Navy ships and submarines.
| Date Taken: | 04.09.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.09.2025 19:20 |
| Story ID: | 494975 |
| Location: | PORT HUENEME, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 71 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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