Characterization of a new luminescent photoelastic coating

Abstract

The luminescent photoelastic coating (LPC) technique measures the full-field shear strain and its principal direction on the surface of complex three-dimensional components. The measured optical strain response is also dependent on the coating thickness. Achieving uniform coating thickness is difficult, and thus requires thickness correction for accurate quantitative strain measurements. The original formulations of LPC employed a dual-layer coating containing luminescent dyes to transmit both strain and thickness information. This paper will document (theory and experiment) a new strategy: a single-layer coating that incorporates both a luminescent dye and an absorption dye. Dependent on the concentration of the absorption and luminescent dyes, the solution is sprayed onto the object of interest to a minimum threshold thickness that corresponds to a predefined penetration depth. Advantages of the single-layer coating are the elimination of thickness dependency, the elimination of compliance and adhesion issues between multiple layers, simpler data acquisition and post-processing methods, and easier and faster coating preparation and application.