Determination of HID electrode falls in a model lamp I: Pyrometric measurements

To verify models describing the near-electrode regions electrodes of pure and doped tungsten for high intensity discharge lamps are investigated in a special model lamp. It can be operated with arc currents of 1 A to 10 A, DC or AC with arbitrary waveforms up to a few kHz. Argon and xenon, at pressures from 0.1 MPa to 1 MPa, are used as fill gases. A large variety of electrodes can be inserted. To perform spatially resolved measurements they are displaced reproducibly within the discharge tube during lamp operation. Spatially resolved pyrometric measurements of the electrode surface temperature in the case of DC operation are presented. From the temperature distribution the power loss of the electrodes by thermal radiation and heat conduction is determined. It increases almost linearly with the arc current at the anode and less than linear at the cathode. A relation is deduced between the cathode fall and the power fed into the cathode setting up the power balance of the cathodic current transfer zone. The resulting cathode falls show a strong dependence on the electrode diameter. Electrical measurements of separate cathode and anode falls are given in a subsequent paper. The outcomes of both methods and of modelling are compared in a third paper.