Here’s NIST’s innovative imaging technology:
To improve the ability of researchers to “see” through fire, NIST has developed an imaging system using blue light to dramatically clear the picture. The imaging method combines narrow-spectrum, blue illumination and matched optical filters to reduce the influence of optical emissions from a glowing hot target and a large natural gas diffusion flame.
As described in a new paper in the journal Fire Technology, the NIST blue-light imaging method can be a useful tool for obtaining visual data from large test fires where high temperatures could disable or destroy conventional electrical and mechanical sensors.
The method provides detailed information to researchers using optical analysis such as digital image correlation (DIC), a technique that compares successive images of an object as it deforms under the influence of applied forces such as strain or heat. By precisely measuring the movement of individual pixels from one image to the next, scientists gain valuable insight about how the material responds over time, including behaviors such as strain, displacement, deformation and even the microscopic beginnings of failure.
