Development and Performance Analysis of an Atomic Layer Thermopile Sensor for Composite Heat Flux Testing in an Explosive Environment

Traditional contact heat flux sensors suffer from a lack of dynamic performance, and existing non-contact optical heat measurement equipment fails to detect convective heat transfer effectively. This limitation precludes the effective testing of composite heat flux in explosive fields. This study introduces an ultra-responsive atomic layer thermopile (ALTP) heat flux sensor, developed and employed for the first time, to evaluate the transient heat flux associated with thermobaric explosions. Measurements reveal that the ALTP sensor’s temporal resolution surpasses that of the thermal resistance thin film heat flux sensor (TFHF), attaining a spectral response time of 10 μs under pulsed laser irradiation. Beyond these radiation-based tests, the present work also conducted novel simulation analyses of high-temperature jet impacts using COMSOL software. Static simulation discovered that fluid velocity significantly influences ALTP’s sensitivity, resulting in an error of 71%. Conversely, dynamic simulation demonstrated that an increase in fluid velocity reduces the ALTP’s time constant, whereas other factors such as fluid temperature exert minimal impact on its dynamic characteristics. This confirms that the simulation model compensates for the cost and accuracy deficiencies of convection heating tests. It also provides a new way to analyze the error of explosive heat flux measurement caused by sensitivity fluctuation and insufficient dynamic performance. In thermobaric explosive trials, the maximum heat fluxes recorded were 202 kW/m in semi-enclosed environments and 526 kW/m in open environments. A distinctive double-wave phenomenon was evident in the test curve. By a fast-response thermocouple, the study was able to differentiate between radiation and convective heat flux in the explosion field. The findings substantiate that the ALTP sensor amalgamates the benefits of optical thermal measurement tools with those of traditional contact heat flux sensors, thereby facilitating composite heat flux measurements in the challenging conditions of an explosive field.