Analysis and suppression of stray radiation in infrared spectral radiation measurement

Abstract

The absolute measurements of spectral radiance, irradiance and intensity in infrared wave range are very important for infrared target recognition, material emissivity measurement and so on. Recently, many researchers focus on how to accurately measure absolute infrared spectral radiation, in which one key point is how to suppress stray radiation. In this paper, an absolute infrared spectral radiance measurement system was built up. The system contained a fixed-point blackbody source, a variable temperature blackbody source, a radiant source to be measured, Fourier Transform Infrared Radiometer (FTIR), optical system, non-contact infrared thermometer and so on. Emissivities of the standard source and the radiant source to be measured are 0.999 and 0.995, respectively. According to Planck’s law, their absolute spectral radiance should be similar at the same radiation temperature. In experiment, temperatures of the standard blackbody and radiant source to be measured were set to 500°C, and the FTIR was used to measure spectral radiance. The results show spectral radiance of the standard source is 14.9% smaller than the radiant source to be measured at 10μm wavelength. A thermal infrared imager and optical simulation software were used to analyze the possible reasons. To solve the problems, a shielding plate and a field aperture was installed respectively at the entrance of the optical system and before the FTIR to suppress stray radiation. Moreover, sizes and positions of the shielding plate, optical system, and field aperture were analyzed by optical simulation software and mathematical calculation. After optimization, the experimental results show the difference of spectral distributions between the standard source and the radiant source to be measured is only 1.42% at 10 μm wavelength, suggesting stray radiation is effectively suppressed in the system.