Abstract

Water vapour is of great relevance to heat transport in power plants and is the only non-polluting product of combustion. CARS spectroscopy is an established tool for thermometry in practical and industrial systems¹. The accuracy of CARS thermometry depends on an accurate spectral model. In this paper we show that modelling of water vapour spectra has been significantly advanced so that for low pressure from 400 to 900K experimental CARS spectra may be accurately described by theoretical models. Accurate CARS thermometry of water vapour has now been demonstrated; over a large range of temperatures and pressures we have achieved temperature errors of order ±15K.

© 1990 Optical Society of America