Influence of emitter-receiver number on measurement accuracy in acoustic pyrometry

Acoustic pyrometry is an interesting technique that may find several useful applications in turbomachinery. As the speed of sound is directly related a medium temperature, this measurement technique estimates the temperature of a gas by considering the time of flight of an acoustic wave moving through it. If only an acoustic emitter-receiver couple is used, only the average temperature along the acoustic path can be determined. If multiple emitter-receiver couples laying on the same plane are used, a reconstruction of the temperature map in the section is possible. This estimation is performed by considering that multiple acoustic paths travel across the same sub-portions of the section and, therefore, the temperature of each sub-portion affects the time of flight along several sound paths. Many parameters affect the accuracy of the measurement, and they are related to the physic of the phenomena involved in the measurement, the accuracy of the instrumentation used, the interaction between the acoustic wave and the flow velocity and the hardware set-up. In this study, the impact of some set-up parameters on the accuracy of the measurement was investigated and, in particular, the number of sound emitter-receiver couples and the number of investigation sub-portions in which the section is divided. A reference temperature map has been considered as a benchmark. This study, which is a preliminary investigation on this technique, was useful to assess the capability of this methodology to correctly describe a temperature distribution in an ideal condition. Therefore, it represents a first step in the set-up of an experimental investigation with an acoustic pyrometer..