Julian Le Rouzic

e-mail: j.le-rouzic@imperial.ac.uk

Tom Reddyhoff
e-mail: t.reddyhoff@imperial.ac.uk
Tribology Group,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Imperial College,
London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

Development of Infrared
Microscopy for Measuring
Asperity Contact Temperatures
Surface temperature measurements within sliding contacts are useful since interfacial heat
dissipation is closely linked to tribological behavior. One of the most powerful techniques
for such measurements is in-contact temperature mapping whereby a sliding contact is
located beneath an infrared microscope. In this approach, one of the specimens must be
transparent to infrared and coated such that radiation components can be distinguished
and isolated from background values. Despite its effectiveness, a number of practical constraints prevent this technique from being applied to rough surfacesa research area
where temperature maps could provide much needed two-dimension input data to inform
mixed and boundary friction models. The research described in this paper is aimed at
improving the infrared temperature mapping technique in terms of validity, robustness, and
spatial resolution, so that measurements of rough surfaces contacts can be made. First,
Plancks law is applied in order to validate the use of surface coating as a means of removing background radiation. Second, a refined method of calibration is put forward and
tested, which negates the need for a soft aluminum coating and hence enables rough surfaces to be measured. Finally, the use of super-resolution algorithms is assessed in order
extend spatial resolution beyond the current limit of 6 lm. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4023148]

1 IntroductionTemperature in Tribological
Contacts
When friction occurs between sliding surfaces, mechanical
energy is converted into heat [1]. The resulting increase in temperature is important since it can influence the behavior of the sliding
system in a number of ways. For dry interfaces, friction-induced
temperature rises can cause components to melt [2], crack [3],
oxidize [4,5], deform and wear rapidly [6], and change their
microstructure [7]. If a liquid lubricant is present between the
surfaces, contact temperatures affect fluid film thickness [8,9],
traction [10], and can cause lubricant degradation [11], desorption
of boundary films [12], and the onset of scuffing failure [13].
These effects are often severe and result in contact conditions that
differ from those which may have been anticipated or desired [1].
As a result, many studies have predicted these temperatures analytically [1,1416].
In addition to the problems described above, friction-induced
temperature rises can also be useful in providing information to
elucidate in-contact behavior since contact temperatures are
closely related to the frictional mechanisms that dissipate heat.
For example, contact temperature measurements have been used
to test lubricant rheological models [17,18], and models that predict cutting-tool/work-piece interactions [1921].
In order to analyze and control the interfacial behavior
described above, it is necessary to develop methods able to measure accurately the temperature of surfaces within sliding contacts. Thermocouples are the most commonly used for this
purpose [2224]; however a number of different experimental
techniques are possible, as described in the following review
articles [25,26]. Particularly useful are those techniques that give
two-dimensional data, rather than ensemble average values, since
the phenomena that cause/result from increased temperatures
themselves vary locally over the interface. For instance, the conditions at the contacting high spots, or asperities, differ significantly
compared to conditions taken as average over the contact as a

whole. As Ludema states in his review paper for instance:

friction should be represented in some more fundamental and
locally distributed manner than the coefficient of friction [27].
Despite its importance, to the authors knowledge, no experimental technique has been developed that is able to map effectively the temperature of contacting asperities. A significant
benefit of such measurements is that they can be coupled with
moving heat source theory [18,2831] to obtain the local variation
in friction occurring over rough surface contacts. Local friction
values, found in this way, would provide invaluable input data for
the many mixed and boundary models that currently relying on
estimated values of friction (e.g., [32,33]).
The focus of this paper is on developing an accurate and reliable experimental technique with sufficient resolution to map the
temperature of contacting asperities. The advances necessary for
such a measurement would have useful implications for other
areas of technology such as microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS), where the asperity contact temperatures affect the electrical resistance and play a significant role in radio frequency (rf)
MEMS switches [34].

Background

2.1 Two-Dimensional
Temperature
Measurement
Techniques. Thermal measurement techniques with high spatial
resolution have been developed and applied to many areas of
physics, engineering science, and biology. A short review of these
techniques follows, in which their suitability to measure interfacial asperity temperatures is assessed.

Contributed by the Tribology Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL

TRIBOLOGY. Manuscript received August 29, 2012; final manuscript received
December 2, 2012; published online March 18, 2013. Assoc. Editor: Dong Zhu.

OF

Journal of Tribology

Microthermocouples are a low-cost measurement method

with excellent thermal resolution (0.01 K). However, spatial
resolution is limited as thermocouple wires are typically
larger than 15 lm in diameter [35]. Furthermore, imaging
with thermocouples requires the development of complicated
translation stages [36].
Scanning thermal microscopy is a near-field technique providing temperature measurements with very high spatial resolution. In this case, a setup similar to an atomic force
microscope is used, with a small thermocouple or resistive

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probe that functions as a temperature sensing tip. Although

scanning thermal microscopy can achieve spatial resolutions
of 50 nm and thermal resolutions of 0.1 K [37], a number of
limitations arise. First, measurement procedures are complex
and time consuming. Second, coupling between thermal and
surface roughness effects make tip/sample interactions difficult to interpret. Finally, due to the close proximity required
between probe and surface, interfaces cannot be accessed. A
review of near-field techniques can be found in Ref. [38].
Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) is an
advanced technique in which a sample is illuminated by light
from a tip with a 50 nm aperture. This scanning tip then
detects the resulting, exponentially decreasing, evanescent
waves that are emitted from the sample surface and changes
in reflectivity are processed to obtain temperature. Similar to
other near-field techniques, NSOM resolution is excellent
(20 nm); however acquisition rates are very slow and interfacial measurements are not possible. Furthermore, the tip geometry can change with surface heating and distort
measurements, while the short tip/sample distance can cause
probe damage [39].
Raman spectroscopy can also be used to map surface temperature. Here a sample is illuminated with a laser and the difference in energy between incident and scattered photons is
measured by a shift in frequency. This effect is attributed to
the inelastic scatterings and energy exchange in the sample
phenomena, which are sensitive to temperature. By monitoring the frequency shift and correlating it to temperature, thermal images with spatial resolutions of less than 1 lm are
possible. However, temperature resolution is generally poor
(between 5 and 20 K) [40].
Fluorescent thermography techniques exploit the temperature
dependence of fluorescence quantum efficiency. This requires
a fluorescent material to be incorporated into the sample that
is then illuminated with UV light. In this way it is possible to
obtain a thermal image of the sample with an excellent thermal resolution (0.01 K) and a spatial resolution of a few
micrometers [41]. This approach is potentially very useful for
analyzing fluid lubricated contacts; however the requirement
for a fluorescer probably precludes its application to rough
surface contact measurements.
Interferometry can also be used to image surface temperatures. Here two lasers beams are focused on a sample using a
Michelson interferometer. The measured dynamic deformations of the surface can then be used to determine the surface
temperature. This technique is limited to reflective samples;
however spatial resolutions of 1 lm are possible [42].
Thermoreflectance is a method that utilizes the change in refractive index, and hence reflectivity of a material that occurs
with temperature. Spatial and thermal resolution as low as
0.3 lm and 0.01 K, respectively, have been reported [43,44].
Although thermoreflectance has excellent spatial and thermal
resolution, it is unlikely that this method could be used to
study rough surfaces.
Liquid crystal thermography uses a thin layer of liquid crystal
deposited on a sample that is then illuminated with white
light. The resulting change of color can be correlated to the
temperature producing thermal images with spatial and thermal resolution of 2 lm and 0.5 K, respectively [45].
Infrared (IR) thermography is currently the most used temperature mapping technique due to recent advances in camera sensitivity and reductions in cost. This approach uses a camera
with a detector sensitive to IR light to collect thermal radiation
of the sample of known emissivity, which according to
Plancks law, can be related to the temperature [46]. Typically
such detectors are sensitive to wavelengths between 3 and 10
lm, which limit spatial resolution to around these values. For
hot samples (>500 K), it is possible to use a CCD camera to
detect near-infrared light and hence obtain submicron spatial
resolution [47]. Being noncontacting, sensitive to temperature

fluctuations down to around 0.01 K [48], and robust, IR thermography is a particularly suitable means of monitoring interfacial temperatures. There are two main limitations associated
with this technique. First, one of the two rubbing specimens
must be transparent to IR in order for the camera to view the
contact. The second limitation is that the spatial resolution is
usually limited to the wavelength of IR. The use of a transparent window is unavoidable with this technique; however the
limited spatial resolution is addressed in this study.
2.2 Development of Infrared Thermography for
Tribological Applications. The first use of an IR thermography
in tribology was proposed in the 1970 s by Winer and co-workers
to study elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) [4951]. Since
full field measurements were not possible, a point measuring
microscope was scanned over a contact formed between a steel
ball and sapphire disk in order to map the balls temperature. A
decade later, Keping and Shizhu used a similar technique, the
results of which they compared to numerical predictions of film
temperature rise [52,53]. Spikes and co-workers then advanced
the technique by applying coatings to the disk in order to measure
the temperature of both specimen surfaces separated by the fluid
film [54] and also applied moving source theory to calculate shear
stress maps from the measured temperatures [2931]. Following
this, Yagi et al. used an IR camera to measure the temperature rise
in an EHL contact associated with rough surface features [55],
dimple formation [56], and the effects of slip ratio [57].
Recently, Reddyhoff et al. incorporated a high specification IR
camera and custom-built microscope lens into their experimental
setup in order to map contact temperatures down to 0.01 K [18]
with a diffraction-limited spatial resolution of 6 lm [58,59]. Using
the approach put forward by Spikes et al., they calculated incontact shear stresses from measured temperature and so showed
differences between lubricants which were not evident when averaging friction measurement were made.
As described above, the majority of infrared thermography
experiments have been restricted to liquid-lubricated contacts.
This has been because surface coatings can be used without being
worn away and contact sizes are large compared to the techniques resolution. There are some exceptions where maps of interfacial temperatures in dry contacts have been obtained. Most
notably, Quinn and Winer used a camera with photographic film
to monitor hotspots resulting from asperity contact between sliding specimens [60]. Although this method did not allow for the
quantitative measurement of temperatures, useful observations
regarding the size, number, and transient nature of the hotspots
were reported. More recent research on hotspots has focused on
their occurrence in disk brakes [61,62]. Hotspots typically result
from thermoelastic instability, whereby positive feedback between
frictional heating thermal expansion leads to very high temperatures and large contact areasconditions well suited to IR thermography. Very few attempts have been made to measure the
temperature of asperities in stable conditions; however the interpretation of thermal images was hampered by insufficient spatial
resolution and unmeasureable variations in emissivity [62,63].
Both of these limitations are addressed in this paper.
Despite the advances in IR imaging, reliable experimental temperature measurements of asperity contacts, and hence friction
data, are not available. The aim of this paper is to extend the
experiment technique reported by Reddyhoff et al. [58] with the
goal of making such measurements possible. To do this, three
issues are addressed.
(i)

First, Plancks law is applied to existing experimental data to

assess the validity of the procedure in which radiation components are isolated and background radiation is removed.
(ii) Despites its proven effectiveness in smooth, liquid lubricated, contacts, the current method of use of an aluminum
coating is not viable since it is worn away when rough
surfaces are tested. Therefore, the second part of the paper

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tests a new calibration procedure that allows background

radiation to be isolated and removed without the use of an
aluminum coating.
(iii) The current spatial resolution of the IR camera, with the
5 objective lens, is close to 6 lm. Although this resolution is close to the diffraction limit of IR light, it is insufficient to map asperities with contact dimensions close to
12 lm. To address this, the final section of the paper
describes the use of super-resolution algorithms that are
applied to IR images in order to increase spatial resolution
beyond 6 lm.

Description of Technique

The sliding contact used to assess the IR mapping technique

was produced by loading a steel ball or roller against a sapphire
disk using a conventional EHL rig (manufactured by PCS Instruments, Acton UK) as shown in Fig. 1. In all tests, the ball or roller
used was 19.05 mm in diameter, made from AISI 52,100 steel
with an Ra roughness <11 nm. The sapphire (Al2 O3 ) disk had a
diameter of 100 mm, thickness of 3.5 mm, and roughness of 7 nm.
Separate motors were used to drive the rotation of the ball and the
disk, which enabled a range of slide-roll ratios to be applied. The
ball was half immersed in a temperature controlled fluid bath
(60.5  C) so that lubricant (Santotrac50) was entrained into the
contact as the ball rotated.
An infrared camera (Phoenix 9705, manufactured by FLIR,
Oregon, USA), with a custom-built 5 objective lens, was located
above the rig and focused through the sapphire disk onto the ball/
disk contact in order to record the infrared radiation emitted from
that region. The cameras InSb detector is sensitive to wavelengths from 3 to 5 lm, while the 320  256 focal plane array,
combined with the 5 lens, gives spatial resolution of 6.3 lm per
pixel.
At points within the sliding interface where specimens are in
contact, the temperature of ball and disk surfaces will obviously
be equal. However, in the areas between asperity contacts, or
when an entrained fluid film is present, surfaces will be separated
and therefore differ in surface temperature. For this reason, it is
necessary to measure the temperature of both of the surfaces that
make up the contact. To achieve this, a method involving three
different sapphire specimens is employed.
(i)

First, an uncoated disk (denoted Un) is used. When this

disk is in place the IR radiation reaching the camera originates from the steel ball and from the bulk of the sapphire.
(ii) A disk with its lower surface covered with a fully reflective coating of chromium (Cr) is also used. The opaque nature of the chromium means that the radiation reaching the
camera in this case originates from the lower surface and
the bulk of the disk.
(iii) Finally, a disk with its lower surface coated with aluminum (Al) is used. Due to the low emissivity of Al (i.e., it
is poor at emitting IR), when this disk is used, only radiation from the bulk of the sapphire disk can reach the
camera.

Fig. 2 Schematic diagram showing radiation components of

the system

Note: in previous work [58] each of these coatings were located

on a single disk in 120 segments. This approach has the advantage that the contact is in exactly the same location in each image
acquired by the camera. However, the use of three separated disks
was favored in the current work since this both enables higher
speeds to be reached and allows disk coatings to be replaced separately (this is helpful since Al coating becomes worn far more rapidly than the Cr).
As illustrated in Fig. 2, it is possible to isolate the separate radiation components from the ball and disk surfaces by respectively
subtracting measurements of Al-disk radiation from those of the
Un disk and Cr disk. This approach assumes the same temperature
rise occurs in the contact when each of the coatings is used. This
is not necessarily the case, especially when the aluminum coating
becomes damaged. For this reason, the research described in the
current paper is aimed at measuring temperatures without using
an Al coating. It should also be noted that the fluid lubricant itself
will emit IR radiation; however this occurs over a narrow band of
wavelengths and is therefore removed with the correct choice of
cut-off filter, placed in front of the camera lens [58]. A calibration
is carried out in order to correlate ball and disk radiation components with surface temperature.
The existing calibration procedure consists of measuring the
IR radiation from the contact using the three different disks in
pure rolling conditions (i.e., when the surface speeds of the
ball and disk are equal) while gradually increasing the temperature of the lubricant bath. Under pure rolling conditions, the
temperature within the contact can be assumed to equal to that
of the lubricant within the bath since the lubricant is subject
to a relatively small degree of shear heating [18]. This calibration gives the relationships between camera counts C and temperature T. These relationships are then used during sliding
tests to convert counts measured by the camera into temperature values.
The relationships, obtained using this existing calibration
approach under pure rolling conditions, are
Tcalibrationbath f1 CCr pure rolling  CAl pure rolling

(1a)

Tcalibrationbath f2 CUn pure rolling  CAl pure rolling

(1b)

Once functions f1 and f2 are obtained they can be used during

each subsequent sliding test to calculate the disk and ball temperature, respectively:

Fig. 1

Schematic diagram of apparatus

Tdisk f1 CCr sliding  CAl sliding

(2a)

Tball f2 CUn sliding  CAl sliding

(2b)

As described above, the very low emissivity aluminum enables

the background radiation from the bulk of the sapphire disk to be
isolated. Unfortunately however, the aluminum coating is prone to
rapid wear; a problem that precludes the use of this technique
from measuring dry or rough surface contacts.

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Results and Discussion

4.1 Theoretical Validation of Measurement. The use of

surface coatings, described above, is aimed at distinguishing
between different components of radiation. To test the effective of
the approach, this section describes how Plancks law of thermal
radiation can be applied to measured data. Plancks law quantifies
the spectral radiance of a blackbody (in units of W/m2 sr1 m1)
as a function of its temperature [64]:
Bk T

2hc2
k5

1

hc
1
exp
kkB T


(3)

where k is the wavelength of emission, c is the speed of light, h is

Plancks constant, and kB is the Boltzmann constant.
Then, if the energy of a single photon E is considered:
E

hc
k

(4)

Dividing Eq. (3) by Eq. (4) gives the radiance of emitted light in
units of photons/s m2 sr1 m1:
bk T

2c
k4

1

hc
exp
1
kkB T


(5)

This expression can then be used to estimate the number of

counts (i.e., photons) that the infrared camera should record when
focused on a sample of temperature T. However, a number of parameters need to be introduced before this calculation can be
made. These are the surface area of the sample A, the emissivity
of the sample e (constant with k, i.e., assuming specimen is a gray
body), the solid angle X (i.e., the spatial fraction of emitted light
collected by the objective lens), a transmission coefficient F (to
account for absorption by components of the system such as the
objective lens), the quantum efficiency of the detector g (number
of e /holes created for each incident photon), the spectral sensitivity of the detector defined by upper and lower wavelength limits k1 and k2 , and the cameras integration time ti (IR equivalent
to shutter speed). Once these coefficients have been included, Eq.
(6) can be integrated between k1 and k2 to give the number of
counts C, recorded by each pixel of the camera during one integration time:
C AeXFgti 2c

k2
k1

dk


hc
k4 exp
1
kkB T


Fig. 3 Single-pixel camera counts, as a function of temperature, from an interface between a steel ball and an uncoated
(Un), a chromium coated (Cr), and an aluminum (Al) coated disk

Values were substituted into Eq. (6), which was then solved
numerically using Matlab for a surface temperature of 293 K, to
give a theoretical estimate of the number of the camera reading of
Cth 2:54  105 counts. This is substantially different from the
actual measured value. As shown by Fig. 3, approximately 5000
counts are recorded by the camera during a calibration in which
the specimens are heated to 293 K.
This discrepancy is unsurprising considering the number of
estimated parameters required in Eq. (6); with the most likely
sources of error being an overestimation of the transmission coefficient and quantum efficiency of the system (due to the age of the
equipment and contamination of lenses). If however each set of
results are normalized by their maximum value, theory and
experiment can be compared, as shown in Fig. 4. This is a valid
approach since it removes the discrepancy due to poorly estimated
coefficients to leave only spectral variation in actual and predicted
measurements.

(6)

In order to apply this equation to experimental data, values

must be found for the coefficients
Specifically, the
 defined above.
2
surface area of one pixel A 6:3  106 (m2 ) (obtained from
camera specifications), emissivity of steel specimen e 0:4 [65],
transmission coefficient F 0:05 (this is an approximate estimate
based on the number of lenses in the system), quantum efficiency
g 0:9 photons1 (obtained from camera specifications), spectral
sensitivity k1 3  106 m and k2 5  106 m, and integration
time ti 6  103 s. Finally, the solid angle X can be estimated
from the focal distance f 2  104 m and the radius of the
objective lens R 2  104 m using the following two equations:
h tan1

X 2p

 
R
f

sin h0 dh0

(7)

(8)

Fig. 4 Normalized single-pixel camera counts, as a function of

temperature, from an interface between a steel ball and an
uncoated (Un), a chromium coated (Cr), and an aluminum (Al)
coated disk

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Fig. 5 Normalized single-pixel camera counts, as a function of

temperature, from an interface between a steel ball and an
uncoated (Un) and a chromium coated (Cr), with subtraction of
camera counts against an aluminum coated disk (Al)

As expected, Fig. 4 shows that the raw experimental measurements do not follow Plancks law. This is to be expected since
each of the measurements are contaminated with the spectrally
complex background radiation from the bulk of the sapphire disk
(i.e., the gray body assumption is not valid). If however, this
unwanted background radiation is removed by subtracting the Al
specimen radiation from that of the uncoated and Cr specimens
[i.e., if Eqs. (2a) and (2b) are applied] excellent agreement with
Plancks theory is found, as illustrated by Fig. 5.
Several conclusions can be drawn from this result. First, it validates the use of coatings as means to isolate radiation components
and measure the temperature of surfaces within a sliding interface.
Conversely, it shows that experimental methods that do not isolate
background radiation are not obtaining correct interfacial temperatures. It also shows that, under these conditions, both ball and
disk specimens can be safely considered as gray bodies. Consequently, it can be noticed that the ratio of radiation components
Un  Al=Cr  Al is approximately equal to the ratio of specimen emissivities esteel =eCr 2:5.
4.2 Reliable Measurement Without Al Coating. The aim
of this section of work is to develop an approach that uses the
same principles of radiation component isolation validated above
but which negates the requirement to test with a soft aluminum
coating. The most obvious way to achieve this is to obtain calibration curves, using only an uncoated and a Cr coated disk, that
directly relate camera counts to surface temperature. Here the
relationship for the disk surface temperature, obtained from the
pure rolling calibration, is given by
Tcalibrationbath g1 CCr pure rolling

(9)

This is equivalent to Eq. (1a), however no Al is used (and the

corresponding ball calibration equation has been omitted for brevity). Again, pure rolling conditions are used in calibration to produce negligible frictional heating; so that surface temperatures
can be controlled by heating of the lubricant bath. Once functions
g1 and g2 are obtained, they are intended to be used to calculate
surface temperatures during subsequent sliding tests:
Tdisk g1 CCr sliding

Fig. 6 Maximum contact temperature versus speed for a contact between ball and disk, lubricated with Santotrac50. The
contact is loaded with 20 N load and a slide-roll ratio of 1.0 is
applied. The temperatures shown have been calculated using
either Eq. (2a) or (10).

as it is when locally heated by a sliding contact. This calibration

method was tested by applying it, along with the established
approach, to a set of radiation measurements. These measurements
were obtained from a contact between a steel ball and sapphire
disk, lubricated with Santotrac50, loaded with 20 N, at a range of
entrainment speeds with a slide-roll ratio of 1.0. The resulting maximum contact temperatures from each method are shown in Fig. 6,
where there is clear disagreement between the two. This shows that
the Cr-only calibration must be incorrect since the original method
has been validated in a previous study [18]. The difference between
the sets of values show that, for the same contact temperature, more
radiation is emitted from the bulk of the disk during steady state
heating than during a sliding test. During the calibration, the whole
system (oil, ball, disk, rig, etc.) are held at a constant temperature,
while during a sliding test the temperature rise occurs only within
the contact.
To solve this problem a two-step calibration procedure is proposed. In the first step, the radiation from the contact is monitored
for both Al and Cr coated disks, under pure rolling conditions, as
the specimens are steadily heated using the temperature controlled
bath. This is a standard calibration and, as described in Sec. 3,
provides a relationship between contact temperature and the radiation component from the disk surface:
Tcalibrationbath f1 CCr pure rolling  CAl pure rolling

(11)

The second calibration step involves keeping the temperature

of the lubricant bath constant while increasing the sliding speed of
the contact. As the sliding speed increases, frictional heating
causes the contact temperature to rise. Radiation from both the Al
and the Cr disks are recorded in the test and correlated to provide
a relationship between background and surface radiation components under actual test conditions:
CAl sliding f2 CCr sliding

(12)

Once functions f1 and f2 are known, they can be used in subsequent experiments to calculate the temperature of the disk by the
following equation:


Tdisk f1 CCr sliding  f2 CCr sliding

(13)

(10)

The approach assumes that the background radiation from the

bulk of the disk is the same under steady heating during calibration

This equation can be used in experiments to calculate contact temperature from recorded radiation values; it accounts for background radiation and does not require the use of an aluminum

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Fig. 9 Geometry of patterned surface on the first photolithography specimen (repeated lines of 20 and 40 lm in thickness)

Fig. 7 Maximum contact temperature versus speed for a contact between steel roller and disk, lubricated with Santotrac50.
The contact is loaded with 20 N load and a slide-roll ratio of 1.0
is applied. The temperatures shown have been calculated using
either Eq. (2a) or (13).

coating. In order to test this new approach, functions f1 and f2

were determined (using the pure rolling and the sliding calibration
steps described above). Then Eq. (13) was applied to data from a
separate sliding test (for a steel roller sliding against sapphire
disk). Figure 7 compares the calculated temperature found in this
way with that obtained using the established approach. This time
there is good agreement between approaches. Furthermore, the set
of values obtained using the new Cr-only method show less noise,
which is probably due to effects of the worn Al coating not being
present. This is an important result as it shows that interfacial temperatures can be measured accurately without using an Al coating.
This approach can also be used with an uncoated disk in order to
obtain the temperature of the ball specimen.
4.3 Super Resolution Algorithms. The current experimental
setup, involving an IR camera (Flir Phoenix 9705) combined with
a 5 IR objective lens, gives a spatial resolution of 6.3 lm/pixel.
Since this value is close to the wavelength of IR it represents the

Fig. 8

Schematic diagram showing super resolution principle

maximum resolution which can be achieved with such a camera

(scanning techniques described in Sec. 2.1 have higher spatial resolution but are unable to probe sliding interfaces). However, 6.3
lm/pixel is insufficient to differentiate the flash temperatures
caused by asperity contacts, which are of the order of 1 lm.
With the aim of improving spatial resolution sufficiently to map
asperity temperatures, the use of super-resolution computing [66]
is now investigated. Super-resolution processes are those in which
several low resolution (LR) images are combined in such a way
so as to produce a single high resolution (HR) image. For this
computation to function effectively, the set of LR images must
have been obtained with a range of different lateral displacements
between the camera and subject. In this way, the LR images contain sufficient information to build a HR image. The superresolution (SR) process is outlined in Fig. 8 and consists of two
distinct steps. The first step is to estimate the displacements and
the rotations between the different LR imagesa process known
as motion recognition, for which a number of algorithms can be
used [67]. The second step involves superimposing the aligned
LR images onto a HR grid to produce a reconstructed HR image
of the subject. A range of algorithms are also available for this latter image reconstruction process [67]. The few examples of this
technique being applied to IR thermography data include Sakagami et al., who used it to increase resolution to detect cracks in
structures [68], and Teyssieux et al., to enhance thermal detection
with CCD camera thermography [69].
In order to assess whether SR algorithms can tackle asperity
contacts that are poorly defined in their shape distribution, it is
necessary to validate the technique using small scale surface features of known geometry. To do this, we focused the IR apparatus
onto the surface of photolithography masks (normally used in silicon fabrication). The surfaces of these specimens consist of a regular repeating pattern of lines or dots, with dimensions close to
the current resolution limit of the camera/lens. Once the camera
was focused, a range of small displacements (approximately
< 10 lm) was applied to the sample while 50 images were
recorded. SR algorithms, coded in Matlab software, were then
applied to these images to compute a single image of high
resolution.

Fig. 10 LR and HR infrared images of the sample surface given

in Fig. 9

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Fig. 11 Geometry of surface pattern on photolithography

specimen (a lattice of 30 lm spaced dots of 10 lm diameter)

Two examples follow, which demonstrate the effectiveness of

the SR approach. As shown in Fig. 9, the surface of the first sample consists of repeated lines of 20 and 40 lm in thickness. A LR
image of this sample is displayed in Fig. 10, alongside a HR
image obtained by applying the robust super resolution algorithm [70] to 50 such LR images.
It is evident that the HR image in Fig. 10 has better resolution
than the LR image. Specifically, it can be seen that aliasing is
reduced on the edges of the lines in the HR image. This comparison however is hindered by the fact that the lines were already
easily detected on the LR image. In order to further test the technique, samples with smaller details were used.
As shown in Fig. 11, the features on the second photolithography specimen consisted of a lattice of a lattice of 10 lm diameter
dots spaced 30 lm apart. A LR image of this sample is displayed
in Fig. 12(a), alongside two HR images obtained by applying different SR algorithms; namely the fast robust [71] and the
interpolation (bicubic interpolation with Matlab built-in func-

Fig. 13 Pixel values for a line across the LR and HR infrared

images shown in Figs. 12(a) and 12(b)

tion) [72] algorithms shown in Figs. 12(c) and 12(d), respectively.

Figure 12(b) shows a simple interpolation of a LR image obtained
using Matlab software (i.e., a single LR image interpolated linearly onto a HR grid).
The difference in quality between LR and HR images in Fig. 12
is very obvious, with the dots on the LR image being barely visible, whereas in the HR images they appear clearly. It can also be
seen that the simple linear Matlab interpolation of a LR image is
of poorer quality than those obtained using the super resolution. It
should be noted that the pixel values in LR and HR images are
similar (Fig. 13). This observation shows that increasing the resolution with this technique does not distort the data. This is critical

Fig. 12 (a) LR image. (b) LR image with simple linear interpolation. (c) HR image with fast robust
super resolution of 50 images. (d) HR image with interpolation super resolution of 50 images.

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APRIL 2013, Vol. 135 / 021504-7

Fig. 14 (a) Circles detection of on HR image by circular Hough

transform. (b) High magnification of (a).

Conclusions

Infrared microscopy is an effective tool for mapping interfacial

contact temperatures and its use is becoming more widespread
due to increasing camera sensitivity and falling costs. Moreover,
by applying coatings to the transparent specimen, it is possible to
measure accurately both of the surfaces within the contact.
To date, two significant restrictions have prevented the application of IR microscopy to rough surface contacts; namely the diffraction limited spatial resolution and the requirement for an Al
coated specimen. The current study has put forward and tested
refinements to the calibration approach that negate the requirement for an Al coated specimen. This offers the possibility to
accurately measure unlubricated and rough interfaces for the first
time. Sufficient detail has been provided that these refinements
can be adopted by other researchers using this technique. It has
also been shown that IR microscopy resolution can be increased
by applying super resolution algorithms to recorded images. Previously invisible details, smaller than 10 lm in diameter, were
enhanced and detected, without distortion. These advances make
the IR microscopy a more powerful tool in tribology and pave the
way for temperature mapping of contacting asperities.

Acknowledgment
The authors are very grateful to EURAMET for supporting this
project EMRP Researcher Grant IND11-REG1 MADES associated with the project Metrology to assess durability and function
of engineered surfaces.

Nomenclature

Fig. 15 Number of circles detected and their average diameter

versus the number of LR images used for (a) and (b) fast robust
SR and (c) and (d) interpolation SR algorithms

since the measured pixels values should correspond to actual contact temperatures.
To study and improve the behavior of the SR technique further,
it is necessary to devise a means of quantifying the resolution of
an image (i.e., to give a measure of how faithful an image is to the
actual geometry of the specimen surface). For this, a circular
Hough transform [73] was applied that detects the number and diameter of circles in an image, as illustrated by Fig. 14 (resolution
is measured by how close the diameter, predicted by Hough transform, is to that of the actual surface features).
It is now possible to study a relationship between the number of
LR images used in an SR algorithm and the resulting improvement in resolution. To do this, the robust and interpolation SR
algorithms were applied to a varying number of LR input images
and the resulting HR images analyzed using the Hugh transform.
These results are summarized in Fig. 15 revealing a number of
observations. First, only 5 to 10 LR images are required before
the SR output stabilizes. Second, the predicted circle diameter of
10.4 lm is very close to the actual diameter 10 lm, again showing
the accuracy of this method. It can also be noticed that no circle is
detected for a single LR image.
The improved calibration and resolution of infrared microscopy
outlined in this paper should enable the measurement of interfacial
temperatures between rough surfaces. Before this can be done however, a number of experimental practicalities should be considered,
such as how to obtain a set of low resolution images under each test
condition. The most obvious way is to load a stationary rough ball
specimen against a sliding sapphire disk. A shaker can then be used
to apply a small displacement to the camera relative to the contact.
Alternatively, the ball could be rotated in order to enable rolling/
sliding conditions. This would require the camera to be triggered to
always record images of the same portion of the rough specimen.

A
Bk
c
C
E
f
f1 , f2 , g1 , g2
F
h
kB
Ra
ti
T
bk
e
g
h
k
k1 , k2

surface area of a pixel

spectral radiance of a black body
light velocity
camera counts
energy of a photon
lens focal distance
functions relating temperature to camera counts
transmission coefficient
Plancks constant
Boltzmanns constant
roughness of the steel ball
integration time
temperature
spectral radiance in photons of a black body
emissivity
quantum efficiency of InSb detector
half angle between sample and lens
wavelength
lower and upper wavelengths of the sensitivity
range of detector
X solid angle between sample and lens

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