Status of pressure sensitive paint technology at National Aerospace Laboratory

This paper is an overview of current status of Pressure Sensitive Paint Technology at National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in Japan. NAL started a research program on luminescent paint technology in 1994. Much effort has been made since then to develop pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) and temperature-sensitive paint (TSP) techniques for large production wind tunnels. Our measurement system consists of Xenon arc-lamps, cooled CCD digital cameras, dedicated data acquisition system, and a paint calibration chamber. The capability of our system has been demonstrated in a production environment of NAL's transonic and supersonic wind tunnels. We developed a new PSP calibration procedure that uses TSP to correct for the temperature effects of PSP and its ability in reducing pressure measurement error has been validated in testing. To explore the future potentials of PSP technology, several fundamental studies are now underway at NAL, that include new formulation paints, fast responding PSPs, cryogenic paints, and a new pressure sensing method based on triplet-triplet absorption transition.