Abstract
Experiments were made to observe how the thermal radiation is influenced by the changes of surface roughness and emission area of polymers. These experiments show that, when other conditions are kept unchanged, the increase of surface area is closely related to that of thermal radiation; for thin polymer films, the increase of emission area increases linearly with the increase of thermal radiation energy. When polymer films become thicker, the increase of roughness results in the increase of thermal radiation energy. When polymer films are very thick, the effect of surface roughness becomes small, and the amount of thermal radiation is nearly equal to that of the flat film. The effect of surface roughness is remarkable for such films as the thermal radiation is small when the surface is flat.
