Fossil fuel power plant boilers operate continuously for months at a time, typically shutting down only for routine maintenance or to address serious equipment failures. These shutdowns are very costly, and diagnostic tools and techniques which could be used to minimize shutdown duration and frequency are highly desirable. Due to the extremely hostile environment in these boilers, few tools exist to inspect and monitor operating boiler interiors. This paper presents the design of a passively cooled, infrared borescope used to inspect the interior of operating boilers. The borescope operates at 3.9 micrometer, where flame is partially transparent. The primary obstacles overcome in the instrument design were the harsh industrial environment surrounding the boilers and the high temperatures encountered inside the boilers. A portable yet durable lens system and enclosure was developed to work with a scanning radiometer to address these two problems by both shielding the radiometer from the environment and by extending the optical train into a snout designed to be inserted into access ports on the sides of the boiler. In this manner, interior images of the boiler can be made while keeping the radiometer safely outside the boiler. The lens views a 40 degree field of view through any 2.5' or larger opening in a foot thick boiler wall. Three of these borescopes have been built, and high resolution images of boiler interiors have been obtained.
We describe the optical, mechanical and servo designs for a motorized, two-FOV (field of view) IR objective lens for use in the 8 - 12 micrometers spectral band. The FOV is changed by moving lenses axially instead of the more traditional approach which is to add and remove lenses. The advantages of this approach include: simple mechanics, since a single mechanism can be used for both adjusting focus and changing FOV; only one lens group need be moved; no stow space is needed for removed lenses; and fewer total lenses are needed (four elements). The lens is used with a low-cost, uncooled focal plane array. This dictates relatively fast F- number, large image format (F/1.1, 7.8 degree(s) narrow FOV, 155-mm narrow-field focal length), and low cost. This combination of wide field and large collecting aperture pose a difficult optical design challenge. The lens meets a range of military environmental requirements including immersion in one meter of water. We describe how the requirements were met. We have fabricated and tested five lenses and we describe the assembly and testing process and present a summary of test results.
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