Thermography is a very useful diagnosis tool in buildings and civil engineering structures. However quantitative diagnosis remains difficult, and having accurate values of surface emissivity is an important factor. The present work is a study about emissivity measurement for quantitative diagnosis with thermography. We needed accurate measurement of the emissivity of a number of civil engineering materials, in order to create a database. Thus, it was necessary to develop new portable measurement devices. Two devices using an indirect measurement method were developed at CERTES laboratory. The method uses the measurement of the reflectivity from a modulated IR source and requires calibration with a highly reflective surface. The first device uses a low-frequency, thermal modulation well-adapted to laboratory measurements, whereas the second one is a portable system using a mechanical modulation at a faster frequency, more appropriate to outdoor measurements. Both devices allow measurements in the broad (1—50µm) and narrow (8—14µm) bands. Experiments were performed on a large number of materials commonly used in buildings and civil engineering structures. The final objective of this work is to build a database of emissivity for these materials. A comparison of laboratory and on-site measurements of emissivity values obtained in both spectral bands is presented along with an estimation and an analysis of measurement uncertainties. A comparative study with measurement obtained at LNE (Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais, French laboratory of metrology) was performed, using a range of materials with widely different radiative properties. An analysis of discrepancies and their possible causes is presented
