Dynamic application of digital image and colour processing in characterizing flame radiation features

In this work, the experimental investigation of the dynamic flame properties of flame flickering and equivalence ratio sensing of a combustion process was done. In particular, the time-varied flame properties were examined using a novel digital image and colour processing methodology. This technique makes use of the observed correlation between a digital image colour signal and physical flame radiation characteristics in the visible wavelength domain. Aspects of RGB and HSV colour modelling principles were applied to show that the addition of colour identification in the image processing of high-speed flame image data could yield three useful parameters which are related to the dynamic behaviour of different flame emanating components. First, the validity of the colour identities for tracking the yellowish-red diffusion and greenish-blue premixed flame colourations were examined by comparing their respective flickering frequency profiles. Then, the usefulness of the extracted R-diffusion, G(premixed) and B-premixed colour signals to abstractly represent the behaviour of soot, C-2* and CH* emission characteristics in a dynamic flame transition from diffusion to stoichiometric premixed condition was demonstrated. In particular, the colour signal ratio B-premixed/G(premixed) was correlated to exemplify the approximate time-varied state of the equivalence ratio from the imaged combustion phenomenon.