Development of a radiative heat fluxmeter with a textile substrate

This study presents the development of a textile radiative heat fluxmeter (TRHF) which was designed by weaving technology. The first part of this work focuses on a textile heat fluxmeter (THF) which was developed with the principle of a gradient heat fluxmeter. In order to transform this THF to a TRHF, a polymer with different graphite concentrations was applied on one of the faces of the THF by using coating technology. In applying graphite, the incident electromagnetic radiation absorption can be increased. Thus, the second part presents the principle and the specific design of the TRHF. Since the previous work gave satisfactory results for polyester/cotton (70/30 PES/CO) material and satin 5 weaving structure, PES/CO/Sa was used as textile substrate for the radiative heat fluxmeter [1] (Keiser, 2007). Five different graphite concentrations, i.e. 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, were compared for electromagnetic radiation absorbency in order to identify the most appropriate ones to produce the TRHF. Two of these concentrations were chosen, i.e. 20% and 30%, due to their higher absorbency. Thus, three THFs with different graphite concentrations, i.e. 0%, 20%, 30%, were developed and their performances were compared with a reference radiative heat fluxmeter for sensitivity. The TRHF with 30% of graphite has higher performance than the other THFs and its sensitivity is slightly higher than the reference one.