Absolute Radiometer for the Flow Field of a Hypervelocity Projectile

As part of a hypervelocity instrumentation development program, it was desirable to include a radiometer system for measuring absolute radiation from projectile flow fields. A system employing a photomultiplier tube was designed, and laboratory and range experiments were conducted to investigate its performance characteristics. The laboratory experiments show that the linearity, saturation, and noise characteristics are suitable for this measurement; the system bandwidth is adequate to allow low frequency calibrations to be applied to high frequency measurements; and a derived expression for radiometer sensitivity variation as a function of photomultiplier supply voltage is reasonably correct. The results of the range experiments imply that the system response is sufficient to reproduce accurately input pulses as narrow as one microsecond and that a particular analytical technique for calculating the form of the radiative input to the radiometer from the projectile stagnation region is valid. Principles involved in the design of photomultiplier radiometer circuits of this type are discussed in detail.