Temperature Compensation for Lifetime-Based Pressure Sensitive Paint Systems

While Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) has demonstrated significant potential in high-speed wind tunnels, several issues that limit the accuracy of the technique have been identified. The implementation of lifetime-based PSP systems has resolved many of these errors; however, non-uniform temperature distributions on the model surface remains a potential problem (especially in low-speed measurement applications). To solve this problem, a series of binary paint systems specifically designed for multiple-gate lifetime approaches have been developed and evaluated. Imaging experiments with the binary paints indicates that a wind-off measurement is necessary to minimize the effects of non-uniform probe distributions and varying paint thickness.