Method for Measuring Ultra-Short Distances Using RADARs for Burden Profile Measurement at Blast Furnace

The operation of the furnace depends largely on the handling of gas distribution which in-turn is reliant on the burden surface profile. Measurement of burden profile has been a challenge because of the harsh conditions inside the furnace. Phased array radar will suffice this purpose with no moving parts; however, it imposes its own challenges. One of them is measurement of extremely short distances as the stockline in the blast furnace is just few meters away from the topmost part. Unlike conventional radar where the target is kilometre away the short distance measurement involves with time measure din nano seconds with pico-seconds resolution to achieve the desired accuracy. This paper implements a method for ultra-short distance measurement using radars for blast furnace application in steel plant.

Profile Measurement by Using a Femtosecond Laser Chromatic Confocal Probe

Confocal probes are widely employed in many industrial fields due to the depth-sectioning effect. The author’s group has also proposed a chromatic confocal probe employing a mode-locked femtosecond laser source which can realize an axial resolution of 30 nm and a measurement range of 40 μm Efforts have also been made to improve the thermal stability of the developed femtosecond laser chromatic confocal probe so that the probe can be applied for long-term displacement measurement or surface profile measurement. Meanwhile, surface profile measurement has not been carried out by using the developed femtosecond laser chromatic confocal probe. For the verification of the performance of developed probe in profile measurement, in this paper, an experimental setup is built and a basic experiment is carried out. By using the probe with further improved thermal stability, the measurement of a sample surface profile is carried out. In this paper, the development of the experimental setup with the femtosecond laser chromatic confocal probe, as well as the results of the surface profile measurements, is presented.