Evaluation of the sensitivity and response of IR thermography from a transparent heater under liquid jet impingement

The feasibility of a visible/IR transparent heater and its suitability for IR thermography is experimentally examined. The most common transparent conductive coating, Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), is quite reflective and its optical properties depend on thickness and manufacturing process. Therefore, the optical properties of several thicknesses and types of ITO, coated on an IR window (BaF2), are examined. A highly transparent Cadmium Oxide (CdO) coating on a ZnS window, also examined, is found to be unusable. Transmissivity is found to increase with a decrease in coating thickness, and total emittance is relatively low. A thick ITO coating was examined for IR thermography in the challenging test case of submerged water jet impingement, where temperature differences were characteristically small and distributed. The measurements under steady state conditions were found to agree well with the literature, and the method was validated. Comparison of two IR cameras did not show the LWIR low-temperature advantage, up to the maximal acquisition rate examined, 1.3KHz. Rather the MWIR camera had a stronger signal to noise ratio, due to the higher emissivity of the heater in this range. The transient response of the transparent heater showed no time-delay, though the substrate dampens the thermal response significantly. Therefore, only qualitative transient measurements are shown for the case of pulsating free-surface jet impingement, showing that the motion of the hydraulic jump coincides with thermal measurements. From these results, recommendations are made for coating/window combination in IR thermography.