Terahertz paintmeter for noncontact monitoring of thickness and drying progress in paint film

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. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.