Comparison of existing laser-induced breakdown thermometry techniques along with a time-resolved breakdown approach.

Temperature is an important parameter for characterizing chemical, physical, and flow processes occurring in combustion environments. Laser-induced breakdown is a process widely used to determine a material's elemental components and its composition, known as laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The breakdown event, or more specifically the breakdown threshold, for a low-pressure gas strongly depends on density effects emanating in the likelihood for multiphoton and avalanche ionization. In this work, a comparison of thermometry techniques using laser-induced breakdown is made and an approach to perform simultaneous gas-phase thermometry on a shot-to-shot basis and spectroscopy is demonstrated by monitoring the moment in time the thermal plasma develops along the intensity gradient of a laser pulse. Breakdown thresholds are profiled along the height of a lean methane-air and partially combusting rich propane-air McKenna flame, and correlated to radiation and convection-corrected thermocouple readings.