Achieving consistent coating properties can be an expensive and challenging proposition. Success requires maintaining uniform film thickness throughout the manufacturing process. Manufacturers and researchers agree that fluid viscosity is a critically important measure of the ultimate film thickness, and typically monitor the in-process fluid viscosity to assure that final coat characteristics are met. Unfortunately, fluid viscosity is impacted by temperature, and temperature variations are common in many processes. Raw viscosity data must, therefore, be adjusted for temperature to achieve coating quality requirements.
Traditionally, researchers monitor viscosity based on two numbers—one for viscosity and one for temperature—to create lookup tables for their process control limits, which can be time consuming. Temperature-Compensated Viscosity (TCV) determines the viscosity of a fluid at a reference temperature that is different from the actual process temperature. TCV mathematically removes the variation in viscosity caused by temperature to determine if the change in viscosity is being altered by the percent solids present, the desired control parameter for most coating operations.