Pressure sensitive paint limitations and solutions

The development of optical pressure measurement systems hold great promise for the aerodynamic development/diagnostics field. Many of the current systems are based on measurement of absolute intensity of paint phosphorescence. There are however many drawbacks to using such an approach. BAe have developed an alternative method based on the measurement of rate of decay of phosphorescence due to a pulsed laser. However, even this approach has limitations. This paper describes the BAe system and details some of the advantages of decay rate and, by reference to experimental data, discusses these limitations and suggests solutions.