Whiteness and Fluorescence in Layered Paper and Board Perception and Optical Modelling

Sammanfattning: This thesis is about modelling and predicting the perceived whiteness of plain paper from the paper composition, including fluorescent whitening agents. This involves psychophysical modelling of perceived whiteness from measurable light reflectance properties, and physical modelling of light scattering and fluorescence from the paper composition.Existing models are first tested and improvements are suggested and evaluated. A colour appearance model including simultaneous contrast effects (CIECAM02-m2), earlier tested on coloured surfaces, is successfully applied to perceived whiteness. An extension of the Kubelka-Munk light scattering model including fluorescence for turbid media of finite thickness is successfully tested for the first time on real papers. It is extended to layered constructions with different layer optical properties and modified to enable parameter estimation with conventional d/0° spectrophotometers used in the paper industry. Lateral light scattering is studied to enable simulating the spatially resolved radiance factor from layered constructions, and angle-resolved radiance factor simulations are performed to study angular variation of whiteness.It is shown that the linear CIE whiteness equation fails to predict the perceived whiteness of highly white papers with distinct bluish tint. This equation is applicable only in a defined region of the colour space, a condition that is shown to be not fulfilled by many commercial office papers, although they appear white to most observers. The proposed non-linear whiteness equations give to these papers a whiteness value that correlates with their perceived whiteness, while application of the CIE whiteness equation outside its region of validity overestimates perceived whiteness.It is shown that the fluorescence efficiency of FWA is essentially dependent only on the ability of the FWA to absorb light in its absorption band. Increased FWA concentration leads accordingly to increased whiteness. However, since FWA absorbs light in the violet-blue region of the electromagnetic spectrum, the reflectance factor decreases in that region with increasing FWA amount. This violet-blue absorption tends to give a greener shade to the paper and explains most of the observed greening and whiteness saturation at larger FWA concentrations. A red-ward shift of the quantum efficiency is observed with increasing FWA concentration, but this is shown to have a negligible effect on the whiteness value. The results are directly applicable to industrial applications for better instrumental measurement of whiteness and thereby optimising the use of FWA with the goal to improve the perceived whiteness.