Precision in 2D temperature measurements using the thermographic phosphor BAM

Abstract

Investigation of optimized spatial precision for surface temperature measurements is performed. The temperature is measured by means of two-color ratio imaging with ICCD cameras, using the thermographic phosphor BAM. The precision in temperature is put in relation to the spatial resolution, two quantities which involve a trade-off in this case: the more spatial smoothing the better precision, but also the worse spatial resolution. Two different setups are used in order to investigate the influence of laser shot-to-shot variations, the flat-field correction and image registration process on the precision. In order to achieve high precision it is crucial to operate the ICCD cameras with a gain setting that does not introduce nonlinearity effects at the present level of irradiance. The results provide guidance on the precision to be expected from surface temperature measurements using the two-color ratio technique in combination with thermographic phosphors and also confirm the importance of highly stable and linear ICCD detectors. At room temperature and low spatial resolution the precision is evaluated to 0.4%.