High-resolution thermophysical measurements using staring infrared detector arrays
Max Schulz, Werner Gross, Hans Scheuerpflug
Infrared thermal imaging by means of a staring focal-plane-array infrared camera system is now available for civil applications in environmental, industrial, and medical areas. The high sensitivity (ΔT < 0.01 K) and the high speed (Δt < 5ms) of such camera systems open up wide new fields for applications. Infrared systems are demonstrated which can detect flaws in solar-grade semiconductor material. Microscope infrared lenses permit localisation of material defects with a resolution of 10 μm. Other applications are the detection of weak spots in the insulation of district heating pipelines and the real-time visualisation of methane gas distributions emitted into the atmosphere from leaky gas pipelines. The high temporal resolution (5ms) of time-dependent temperature variations by the infrared camera systems even permits the capture of a frame sequence of the solution heat trace created by a methanol droplet falling into and rebounding out of a water surface until it eventually dissolves in the water after 100 ms.