Temperature measurement of nonsteady arcs

The temporal change of the radial temperature profile of a free burning argon arc at power frequency and a flashover arc near the surface of a polluted plate is experimentally determined with the help of a spectroscopic system, the detail of which is described in this paper. The image of the arc is scanned by a rotating 30-facet mirror drum over the entrance slit of a grating spectrometer. The intensity of up to four spectral lines can be simultaneously measured. The temperature results for the argon arc are derived by employing the absolute intensity method and the relative intensity method. This preliminary experimental investigation shows that the system is capable of measuring and monitoring the temperature development of nonsteady arcs which may be randomly moving in a known space.