A new elasticoluminescent material, which is a kind of mechanoluminescence, has been developed by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. The material has the characteristic that can produce luminescence repeatedly even at very small elastic deformation. By coated to the surface of a structure, the material can visualize the distribution of stress and can make a diagnosis to the soundness of the structure. So far, this has been carried out for building, bridge, etc, under normal temperature condition. Because this material has a characteristic that luminescence not only with the change of stress, but also with the change of the temperature and even the temperature changing rate, it is considered being difficult to be used under high temperature condition.
In this paper, the elasticoluminescent materials are used under high temperature condition to seek the possibility of the visualization of the distribution of thermal stress. Test section was designed to be able to generate thermal stress. Luminescence data from the elasticoluminescent materials, strain data and temperature distribution data were derived. The comparison between the luminescence data and the strain data show the elasticoluminescent material can measure the distribution of thermal stress qualitative.
