Overview
Topic status: In progress
Overview
Aircraft paints provide the main barrier to corrosion of the underlying metallic substrate. Therefore, the paint’s integrity plays a key role in airworthiness. Breakdown of aircraft paints often involves an increase in strain in the coating. Eventually, the strain exceeds the strain to failure and the coating fails by cracking. It would be very useful to monitor this strain build-up so that the residual paint life could be assessed. To do this, we intend to use carbon nanotube-based strain sensors. These sensors can be applied to the paint substrate and monitored by measuring conductivity change as a function of paint ageing.
Research activities
The research activities to be undertaken during this project will include:
- preparation of paint samples that incorporate carbon nanotube strain sensors
- application of the prepared materials to study paint degradation
- correlation of strain data from the sensors with other measures of paint degradation, including infrared spectroscopy.
Expected outcomes
Development of a simple model that relates strain build-up in paint to measureable chemical change (via infrared spectroscopy).
Duration of project
6 weeks over December 2011, January and early February 2012
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scholarship
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Keywords
- carbon nanotube, sensors
- Contact
- Please contact the supervisor for enquiries.
Associate Professor Geoffrey Will
Dr John Colwell
