Geometrical and thermal optimization of cylinder-conical blackbody cavities to uniform radiance temperature profiles in the infrared

Abstract

Large-area blackbody cylinder conical cavities are generally used as primary radiation sources for calibrating and characterizing radiation thermometers and quantitative thermal imagers in the infrared, both in metrology laboratories or for industrial applications. The radiation temperature of the emitted radiation depends on effective emissivity and surface (contact) temperature. The instrument’s field of view generally only covers the cavity bottom since this is where contact temperature is best measured. A non-uniform effective emissivity profile at the bottom poses a problem if instruments with a different field of view have to be calibrated with the same blackbody. Spatial uniformity depends principally on the cone angle and temperature gradient along the cavity. In this paper, we analyse blackbody optimization in terms of uniform radiance temperature profiles as a function on geometric parameters and temperature. For the isothermal case, we conclude that angles between 160° and 170° are the optimum, depending on intrinsic emissivity and length-to-diameter ratio of the cavity. For non-isothermal cavities, the effect of the temperature gradient on uniformity is relatively small, with only the temperature near the bottom proving significant. The use of multi-zone maintenance furnaces would allow temperature gradients to be designed that can improve uniformity in addition to geometric optimization.