title: Terahertz paintmeter for noncontact monitoring of thickness and drying progress in paint film.
abstract: We propose a paintmeter for noncontact and remote monitoring of the thickness and drying progress of a paint film based on the time-of-flight measurement of the echo signal of a terahertz (THz) electromagnetic pulse. The proposed method is effectively applied to two-dimensional mapping of the painting thickness distribution for single-layer and multilayer paint films. Furthermore, adequate parameters for the drying progress are extracted from the THz pulse-echo signal and effectively applied to monitor the wet-to-dry transformation. The THz paintmeter can be a powerful tool for quality control of the paint film on the in-process monitoring of car body painting.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8531, Japan. t-yasui@me.es.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Takeshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yasui
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yasuda
authors.forename: Ken-ichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sawanaka
authors.forename: Tsutomu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Araki