In heat transfer measurements with highly non-uniform wall heat fluxes, high spatial resolution of wall temperatures is required to fully capture the complex thermal situation. Infrared thermography systems provide that spatial resolution. To meet the thermal accuracy, they are usually calibrated in situ using thermocouples embedded in the test surface, which have to cover the complete temperature range of interest. However, thermocouples which are placed in regions of high temperature and heat flux gradients often cannot be used for the calibration and the overall accuracy of the calibration decreases significantly. Therefore, in the present work a novel in situ calibration method is presented which does not require thermocouples over the complete surface temperature range. The number of free parameters of the calibration function is reduced by an optimized insensitivity of the system with respect to changes in operating conditions. Reference measurements demonstrate the advantages of the new method.

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