In March, the corrosion and materials protection community gathered in Houston, Texas, for AMPP 2026, the Association for Materials Protection and Performance’s Annual Conference + Expo. This premier event brought together senior engineers, procurement leaders, environmental managers, and operations executives from across the oil & gas, power electronics, and transportation industries. COMSOL was proud to exhibit and present, joining the global conversation around innovative solutions for corrosion control and protective coatings.
What AMPP 2026 Was All About
If there’s one thing that was immediately clear when walking the floor at AMPP 2026, it’s that corrosion is a much bigger deal than most people outside the field realize. We’re talking about a challenge that touches oil and gas pipelines, power systems, transportation infrastructure — pretty much anything made of metal that has to survive harsh conditions over a long period of time. What struck me most was how diverse the crowd was. You had senior engineers deep in the technical weeds right alongside procurement teams, environmental managers, and operations leaders, all of them there because corrosion affects their work, their budgets, and their safety responsibilities. The conversations happening on the show floor weren’t just technical; they were about risk, cost, and how to do things smarter. In this vein, we noticed a theme that kept coming up: People want better ways to predict and prevent corrosion before it becomes a problem, not just ways to respond to it after the fact.
COMSOL at the Exhibit Hall
The crowd stopping by our booth was genuinely all over the map: engineers, operations managers, procurement folks, and everyone in between. But what connected all of them was the same underlying challenge: Physical testing alone is either expensive or slow and doesn’t always give you the full picture. Physics-based simulation, on the other hand, enables engineers to virtually analyze real problems — from how quickly a pipeline might corrode to what protection strategy works best — before prototypes are built or physical tests get underway. That’s a value proposition that resonates whether you’re an engineer solving a technical problem or a manager trying to reduce costs and risk. At our booth, we were able to demonstrate our simulation capabilities live and have meaningful conversations about how virtual testing can complement, or even replace, costly physical tests.
Chen You, Bertil Nistad, and myself were on hand at the COMSOL booth to answer questions about the COMSOL® software and demonstrate its capabilities.
COMSOL’s Technical Presentation
One of the things I was most excited about was getting to watch two of my colleagues present in the technical program. COMSOL Senior Applications Engineer Chen You and Development Manager Bertil Nistad delivered a session together on modeling corrosion prediction and cathodic protection in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, and the room was engaged from start to finish. Even coming from a nontechnical background, I found myself genuinely following along. They broke down how simulation can be used to model the conditions that lead to corrosion and how products like the Corrosion Module add-on to COMSOL Multiphysics® help engineers design better cathodic protection systems. The Q&A at the end reflected this engagement, with attendees asking about how the models are applied in practice, how cathodic protection systems are simulated, and how the capabilities of the COMSOL® software can be used in different scenarios.
As part of the AMPP 2026 technical program, Chen You and Bertil Nistad gave a presentation on using the COMSOL® software to model corrosion prediction and cathodic protection.
“The AMPP Annual Conference is a great place to meet our existing customers and showcase our modeling software to a wide audience of possible prospects,” Nistad said. “For me, it was a week full of great presentations and lively discussions about corrosion modeling.”
Nistad also had the chance to be interviewed at the conference by Inspenet. You can check that out here.
Why It Matters
Here’s the thing about corrosion: It costs the global economy trillions of dollars every year. That’s not a typo. Whether they stem from a leaking pipeline, a degraded coating on a ship hull, or a power component failing ahead of schedule, the downstream effects of corrosion are real: safety risks, unplanned downtime, and major costs that hit both operators and the environment.
Being at the AMPP Annual Conference + Expo made it easy to see why simulation is becoming such an important part of how the industry works. When businesses can model a problem and virtually test different materials, protection strategies, or designs, they make better decisions before anything is built. That’s good for engineers, good for business, and good for the environment.
Model Corrosion Processes
Want to learn more about how modeling and simulation can be used for understanding corrosion and designing and optimizing corrosion protection systems? Check out the Corrosion Module via the button below.
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