In order to further improve the energy conversion efficiency in reciprocating engines, detailed knowledge about the involved processes is required. One major loss source in internal combustion engines is heat loss through the cylinder walls. In order to increase the understanding of heat transfer processes and to validate and generate new heat transfer correlation models it is desirable, or even necessary, to have crank-angle resolved data on in-cylinder wall temperature.Laser-Induced Phosphorescence has proved to be a useful tool for surface thermometry also in such harsh environments as running engines. However, the ceramic structure of most phosphor coatings might introduce an error, due to its thermal insulation properties, when being exposed to rapidly changing temperatures. In this article the measurement technique is evaluated concerning the impact from the thickness of the phosphorescent layer on the measured temperature. Experiments with different layer thicknesses are performed both during motored and fired operation of a HCCI engine. The results reveal a need for caution when applying the technique for in-cylinder measurements.

General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal A concept for time-sensitive optical detectors is described that shows how to confirm whether the detection device is operating in the linear response regime. By evaluating the recorded time decay of a thermographic phosphor, even weak saturation effects far from obvious situations can be identified and further related to either optical or electrical saturation. The concept has been validated by running a PMT detector close to saturation and exposing it to the optical signal decay of two different thermographic phosphors, La 2 O 2 S:Eu and CdWO 4 . It was confirmed that short but intense light exposures at the beginning of an individual time decay influence the detector response for the rest of the decaying signal including temporal areas, where the anode current has dropped well below the manufacturer specified current limit. Such situations are common when applying, e.g., phosphor thermometry where it is necessary to retrieve the full decay curve from a single-shot event, i.e., standard techniques based on single-photon counting are omitted. Finally, means of compensation are introduced in order to facilitate the retrieval of useful information from the measurement data when operation in the non-linear response regime is inevitable.

This paper presents investigations on the limitations of intensified CCD (ICCD) cameras when performing quantitative 2D temperature measurements using thermographic phosphors. The temperature is evaluated using a two-color ratio technique, which demands high signal linearity of the detector. However, this work shows that the ICCD cameras used suffer from nonlinearity at levels of irradiance that do not necessarily produce particularly high count levels, i.e. well below the saturation limit of the A/D converter. For the phosphor thermometry, this results in false absolute temperature readings and decreased measurement precision. The results show that there is a useful workspace in the irradiance/camera gain combination where the detector should preferably be used. A response function for the ICCD camera used is constructed. Furthermore, in order to perform quantitative measurements, there is an upper limit of counts that should not be exceeded. This limit must be investigated for each experimental configuration since it depends on the characteristics of the specific light source and also varies between different cameras.

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