Apparent directional spectral emissivity determination of semitransparent materials

An inverse estimation method and corresponding measurement system are developed to measure the apparent spectral directional emissivities of semitransparent materials. The normal spectral emissivity and transmissivity serve as input for the inverse analysis. Consequently, the refractive index and absorption coefficient of the semitransparent material could be retrieved by using the pseudo source adding method as the forward method and the stochastic particle swarm optimization algorithm as the inverse method. Finally, the arbitrary apparent spectral directional emissivity of semitransparent material is estimated by using the pseudo source adding method given the retrieval refractive index and absorption coefficient. The present system has the advantage of a simple experimental structure, high accuracy, and excellent capability to measure the emissivity in an arbitrary direction. Furthermore, the apparent spectral directional emissivity of sapphire at 773 K is measured by using this system in a spectral range of 3 μm-12 μm and a viewing range of 0°-90°. The present method paves the way for a new directional spectral emissivity measurement strategy.