Pressure-sensitive-paint measurements in a large-scale commercial-engine test stand

This paper presents the application of pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) measurement technology to a large-scale commercial turbine-engine test stand. In this work, the test article is the engine-inlet bell mouth. A sol-gel-based PSP is applied to the inlet and illuminated using the blue (460-nm) output of eleven LED arrays. PSP data are acquired using a scientific-grade CCD camera. The application of PSP measurements in the engine-test-stand environment requires test instrumentation to be fixed within a housing located upstream of the test article. Challenges associated with performing PSP in this hostile environment are discussed, with focus on the strategies implemented to recover surface-pressure distributions on the engine-inlet bell mouth.