Evaluation of infrared emission spectra of aircraft exhaust with the FitFas software

Abstract. A Fourier transform spectrometer was used to measure infrared spectra of the exhaust gas of an aircraft's jet engine. The measured spectra were modelled by use of the program FASCODE. For this simulation, the inhomogeneous gas mixture is divided into several homogenous layers which are characterized by their geometrical extents, temperatures, pressures and chemical compositions. To obtain values for the temperatures and the CO, NO, H₂O and CO₂ concentrations of the layers a nonlinear least-squares algorithm was implemented. The program (FITFAS) not only changes the parameters to find the minimum of the squared differences between measurement and calculation; it also provides the variances and covariances of the parameters. Thus information is obtained to which parameters (besides the interesting ones) must be fitted (or be accurately known). It also tells us whether or not another spectral interval is more suitable for the determination of a specific parameter.