AVERAGE TOTAL HEMISPHERIC EMISSIVITY MEASUREMENT IN THE LWIR SPECTRUM FOR ADHESIVE TAPES USED IN THE THERMOGRAPHY TAPE TEST

Thermographers often use comparative methods to estimate surfaceemissivity. Among the most used is the tape method. In this method a knownemissivity tape in the LWIR (Long Wavelength Infrared) spectrum is placedon the surface to be inspected. After thermal equilibrium, the temperature ofthe tape and the surface under inspection must be the same. In this case, thetemperature observed on the tape is the reference temperature. The emissivityof the surface must then be changed until the reference temperature isreached. It is common practice to admit the value of the emissivity of theadhesive tape as 0.95, there are few studies that present these data withmetrological rigor, which leads to doubts about the emissivity of thecommercial tapes. In this work, experiments were performed on Tekbond,Double A, 3M 101, Rapix, Altape, adhesive tapes for temperatures of 50, 55,60, 65 and 70ºC. An experimental apparatus was developed through which itwas possible to estimate surface reflection, transmission and atmosphericemission for one and two layers of tapes, in order to make emissivitymeasurements possible. Through the data it was possible to statisticallyestimate the LWIR average total hemispheric emissivity as well as theacceptance range to 95% certainty, being therefore equal to ε=0.94±0.03. Itis possible to arm, therefore, that the value of 0.95, usually used as emissivityof the adhesive tape, is extremely reasonable because it is 0.01 of the averagevalue of the Gaussian distribution calculated by this work

Infrared Thermography Approach for Effective Shielding Area of Field Smoke Based on Background Subtraction and Transmittance Interpolation

Effective shielding area is a crucial indicator for the evaluation of the infrared smoke-obscuring effectiveness on the battlefield. The conventional methods for assessing the shielding area of the smoke screen are time-consuming and labor intensive, in addition to lacking precision. Therefore, an efficient and convincing technique for testing the effective shielding area of the smoke screen has great potential benefits in the smoke screen applications in the field trial. In this study, a thermal infrared sensor with a mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) range of 3 to 5 μm was first used to capture the target scene images through clear as well as obscuring smoke, at regular intervals. The background subtraction in motion detection was then applied to obtain the contour of the smoke cloud at each frame. The smoke transmittance at each pixel within the smoke contour was interpolated based on the data that was collected from the image. Finally, the smoke effective shielding area was calculated, based on the accumulation of the effective shielding pixel points. One advantage of this approach is that it utilizes only one thermal infrared sensor without any other additional equipment in the field trial, which significantly contributes to the efficiency and its convenience. Experiments have been carried out to demonstrate that this approach can determine the effective shielding area of the field infrared smoke both practically and efficiently