Development and calibration of reduced-size plate thermometer for measuring incident heat flux

Abstract

This study proposes a new reduced-size plate thermometer with a modified shape and improved insulation performance in order to resolve problems commonly found when using conventional plate thermometers to measure incident heat flux in fire environments, for example, a low spatial resolution caused by the large plate area and a non-uniform temperature distribution on the plate. The main results of this study showed that the new plate thermometer exhibits high spatial temperature uniformity, and that the plate thermometer can be reduced in size to 30 mm. Moreover, it was found that the relative error of the incident heat flux of the plate thermometer was substantially reduced compared to that of a heat flux meter using a conduction correction factor expressed as a third-order polynomial function of heat flux, rather than using an average empirical constant calculated from measurement over a wide range of heat fluxes. Finally, it was confirmed that the incident heat flux measured by the new reduced-size plate thermometer in a heptane pool fire was in good agreement with the heat flux meter measurements during the rapid-fire growth, fully developed and decay phases of a fire.