Comparison of two methods for contactless surface temperature measurement

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to determine the temperature filed of the heating surface on the basis of temperature measurements taken by liquid crystal thermography and infrared thermography applied in boiling heat transfer research during FC-72 flow in minichannels, and to compare them. The essential part of the experimental stand is the test section with two parallel rectangular minichannels, each 1.7 mm deep, 24 mm wide and 360 mm long. It is possible to observe the channel surfaces through panes: of the first minichannel allows observing foil temperature changes on the plain side due to liquid crystal thermography (LCT), which required treating the foil surface with thermochromic liquid crystals, of the other minichannel enables detecting outer glass or foil surface temperature changes due to infrared thermography (IRT). Comparison of the results of the measurements are presented in graphical form as thermographs and as heating surface temperature vs. minichannel length. The differences between two sets of measurement data concerning the temperature of the heating surface obtained with LCT and IRT, were analyzed using: Pearson linear correlation coefficient, determination coefficient, Experimental Method Error and Method Accuracy. The comparative data analysis shows that similar values and distributions of the surface temperature were obtained from both techniques.