Determination of radial distribution of flame temperature and flame velocity by the thermocouple

Today, the use of resistant and high melting point thermocouples is considered as an efficient and inexpensive tool for measuring the temperature of hot gases produced by combustion. Temperature measurement by thermocouples has inherited errors due to the radiation loss and conduction loss. Therefore, it is necessary to correct this error. In this research, the thermocouple is firstly modeled using a numerical method. The validity of the original code is accredited by comparing the results with a similar previous study. Then, the effects of thermocouple diameter and average flow velocity are investigated on the thermocouple error. The error increases about 50% with increasing the thermocouple diameter from 0.5 to 1 mm. Besides, the error decreases about 41% with increasing the average velocity from 1 to 5 m/s. Based on a previous experimental study, the thermocouple modeling results indicate that the maximum errors for thermocouples with diameter of 300 and 500 microns are 30.8% and 39.6% in these conditions, respectively. In the following, a novel comprehensive solution is suggested to calculate the simultaneous distribution of temperature and velocity. Its results confirm that this algorithm has acceptable accuracy for high temperature flow conditions.