LINKS

Some useful links to other research groups working on thermocouples, to the international gas turbine instrumentation community web sites and to websites reporting useful information on temperature measurement are reported below:

RESEARCH GROUPS WORKING ON THERMOCOUPLES

• http://www.npl.co.uk/engineering-measurements/thermal/temperature/ (The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is one of the worldwide leading institutions for temperature measurement and calibration. The web site contains a useful "Introduction to temperature" and the group led by Prof Graham Machin organizes every year a very interesting "Temperature measurement and calibration" course)

• http://www.cstl.nist.gov/div836/836.05/thermometry/home.htm (NIST is the National (American) Institute for Standards and Technology, one of the worldwide leading institutions for temperature measurement and calibration; the website has an extensive bibliography on many topics related to temperature measurement and many interesting papers can be downloaded. In addition to that the NIST website contain all the tables for the letter-designated thermocouple)

• http://www.egr.uri.edu/che/people/gregory/index.html#ResInf (at the University of Rhode Island Dr. Otto Gregory develops, in cooperation with NASA Glenn Research Center, thin film thermocouples to be used for surface temperature measurement in gas turbines; thin film thermocouples are based on ceramic materials deposited on an alumina substrate: a thermocouple which has been proved to be promising (click here for more information) is based on the following two thermoelements: indium-tin-oxide(ITO) and NiCoCrAlY alloy/alumina cermet. Other studied thin film ceramic thermocouples have been bi-ceramic junctions based on nitrogen-doped ITO/oxygen-doped ITO or Alumina doped ZnO/ITO: for more information click here)

• http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/research.htm#novelfilms (NASA Glenn Research Center is involved in thin film thermocouples development in cooperation with University of Rhode Island and Case Western Reserve University. With the latter one NASA is developing thermocouples based on silicide vs carbide, as for instance CrSi₂ vs TaC: for more information click here)

• http://www.onera.fr/news/2006-013.php (ONERA is an HEATTOP partner and is developing thin film thermocouples on turbine blades)

• http://www.thermoelectrics.caltech.edu/ (Caltech and JPL (NASA Jet Propulsion Lab) are also working on thermoelectric materials, but for different applications: they are not used for temperature measurement, but for energy recovery and power generation. The website provides a very good introduction to the possible applications and the range of materials currently investigated)

GAS TURBINE INSTRUMENTATION COMMUNITY

• http://www.evi-gti.com (EVI-GTI is the European Virtual Institute for Gas Turbine Instrumentation, that is the European working group on Gas Turbine Instrumentation)

• http://www.piwg.org (PIWG is the Propulsion Instrumentation Working Group, which is the American working group on Gas Turbine Instrumentation)

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT

• http://www.temperatures.com (a good website to collect information about different temperature sensors; it contains quite few links to other websites)

• http://srdata.nist.gov/its90/main/ (NIST webpage containing the reference tables for letter designated thermocouples)