A Light Transmission Based Liquid Crystal Thermography System

This paper presents results from a study aimed at developing a novel thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) temperature measurement system that uses light transmission instead of light reflection to measure surface temperature fields. In previous work, we reported on the effect of temperature on light transmission through TLCs as measured with a spectrophotometer [Roth, T. B., and Anderson, A. M., 2005, “Light Transmission Characteristics of Thermochromic Liquid Crystals,” Proceedings of IMECE2005, Orlando, FL, Paper No. IMECE2005-81812;Roth, T. B., and Anderson, A. M., 2007, “The Effects of Film Thickness, Light Polarization and Light Intensity on the Light Transmission Characteristics of Thermochromic Liquid Crystals,” ASME J. Heat Transfer, 129(3), pp. 372–378]. Here we report on results obtained using a charge coupled device (CCD) camera and polychromatic light setup that is similar to the type of equipment used in TLC reflection thermography. We tested three different light sources, a white electroluminescent light, a green electroluminescent light, and a halogen fiber optic light, using both direct and remote lighting techniques. We found that the green signal (as detected by the CCD camera) of the green electroluminescent light makes the best temperature sensor, because under remote lighting conditions it showed a 500% linear signal increase as the temperature of the R25C10W TLCs was raised from $30°to48°C$⁠. We further found that the angle of the CCD camera relative to the light did not significantly affect the results for angles up to $10deg$ for remote lighting and $15deg$ for direct lighting. The effect of light intensity variation was not significant for intensities up to 40% of the original level when normalized on the intensity at $19°C$ (a temperature outside the active range of the TLCs). The use of light transmission results in a larger range of temperature over which the TLCs can be calibrated and offers opportunities for more uniform lighting conditions, which may help overcome some of the problems associated with light reflection.