Optical Diffraction Corrections in Radiometric Thermodynamic Temperature Determination

One of the main components of uncertainty in high-temperature thermometry arises because of the size-of-source effect (SSE). This effect makes the temperature measurement sensitive to the geometry of the radiating environment. It is caused by optical diffraction and especially by light scattering off/from, and inter-reflections between, optical components inside the pyrometer. The LNE-INM/CNAM is involved in extending the thermometry temperature scale to very high temperatures (T > 2000 °C) and has developed eutectic-based fixed points (Sadli et al. (in: Zvizdic (ed.) Proceedings of TEMPMEKO 2004, 9th International Symposium on Temperature and Thermal Measurements in Industry and Science, 2004)) and a thermodynamic temperature measurement capability based on absolute radiometric methods (Briaudeau et al. (in: D. Zvizdic (ed.) Proceedings of TEMPMEKO 2004, 9th International Symposium on Temperature and Thermal Measurements in Industry and Science 2004)). A new measurement technique that uses an optical fiber has been developed and tested, allowing the determination of the SSE at any defocusing plane, with high resolution. A model based on optical diffraction has been developed to simulate the SSE in a real situation, considering the contribution to the pyrometer signal of the whole “3D” optical scene inside the blackbody furnace. Using the same approach, it has been demonstrated that optical scattering in a simple radiance meter can be estimated from accurate optical diffraction measurement.