Evaluation and improvement in the accuracy of a charge-coupled-device-based pyrometer for temperature field measurements of continuous casting billets

This paper presents a radiometric high-temperature field measurement model based on a charge-coupled-device (CCD). According to the model, an intelligent CCD pyrometer with a digital signal processor as the core is developed and its non-uniformity correction algorithm for reducing the differences in accuracy between individual pixel sensors is established. By means of self-adaptive adjustment for the light-integration time, the dynamic range of the CCD is extended and its accuracy in low-temperature range is improved. The non-uniformity correction algorithm effectively reduces the accuracy differences between different pixel sensors. The performance of the system is evaluated through a blackbody furnace and an integrating sphere, the results of which show that the dynamic range of 400 K is obtained and the accuracy in low temperature range is increased by 7 times compared with the traditional method based on the fixed light-integration time. In addition, the differences of accuracy between the on-axis pixel and the most peripheral pixels are decreased from 19.1 K to 2.8 K. Therefore, this CCD pyrometer ensures that the measuring results of all pixels tend to be equal-accuracy distribution across the entire measuring ranges. This pyrometric system has been successfully applied to the temperature field measurements in continuous casting billets.