Transient measurements using thermographic phosphors.

The decay of thermographic phosphors has been used to measure temperature in a wide variety of applications. Because measurements of a single temperature are obtained from intensity decay in time, the use of phosphors is predicated on the fact that the temperature does not change during the decay. This may not be valid in some engineering applications. A new model for phosphor data reduction designed to recover transient effects is presented. A heated wire experiment is used to determine the efficacy of the approach. Results for a particular microsecond phosphor indicate that transients can be resolved, but not to a great deal of accuracy. Nevertheless, the steady model predicted temperatures that were 10 degrees C off compared to the transient model during high heating.