Abstract
Facilities and techniques to characterize heat flux sensors are under development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. As a part of this effort, a large aperture high-temperature blackbody was commissioned recently. The graphite tube blackbody, heated electrically, has a cavity diameter of 51 mm and can operate up to a maximum temperature of 2773 K. A closed-loop cooling system using a water-to-water heat exchanger cools electrodes and the outer reflecting shield. This paper describes the newly developed blackbody facility and the validation tests conducted using a reference standard Schmidt-Boelter heat flux sensor. The transfer calibration results obtained on the Schmidt-Boelter sensor agreed with the previous data within the experimental uncertainty limits.