Pressure Sensitive Paints:The Basics & Applications

Report, 2011

Surface pressure measurement is one of the fundamental measurements in fluid dynamics experiments. Pressure sensitive paint (PSP) is a relatively new tool that has the unique capability of providing a field measurement over the entire surface of a model. This method is based on the attenuation by oxygen of the luminescence emitted by certain excited molecules in the visible or ultraviolet spectrums. The higher the pressure, the higher the partial pressure of the oxygen and the more the intensity emitted by the coating is attenuated. Then all that is needed is to measure the intensity of the emission to find the pressure. Because of its many advantages over the traditional techniques, it has been extensively used in almost all the fluid dynamics flow regimes. The following document describes the basics of PSP and its applications.