Characterizing Scratch Appearance on Polymer Coatings and Plastics: Effects of Illumination and Pigment Color

摘要

Scratch resistance is a desirable coating characteristic and is a critical performance property in industry for evaluating the durability of polymer coatings and plastic products. Recent advances in optical scattering measurements have provided a quantitative way to evaluate the scratch resistance objectively by relating surface deformation (scratch morphology) to appearance attributes. In this paper, effects of illumination and pigment color on the scratch appearance have been investigated. Specular and off-specular intensities from scratched surfaces, containing different color pigments, were measured using different illumination wavelength and incident/scattering angles. The scattering signal from the scratch was compared to the background signal from the unscratched surface, and the ratio of these two signals was used to evaluate the visibility of the scratch.