A noncontact method for measuring thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of anisotropic materials

A noncontact method for measuring the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of anisotropic materials is proposed. This method is based on the fact that the surface temperature variation with time depends on the thermal properties of the material when its surface is heated locally. The three-dimensional transient heat conduction equation in the material is solved numerically. The dimensionless average surface temperature variations are obtained along each principal axis: that is, thex andy axes. The relation between the dimensionless temperature and the Fourier number is expressed by a polynomial equation and used as a master plot, which is a basic relation to be compared with measured temperature variation. In the experiments, the material surface is heated with a laser beam and the surface temperature profiles are measured by an infrared thermometer. The measured temperature variations with time are compared with the master plots to yield the thermal conductivity λ _x and thermal diffusivityx _v in thex direction and the thermal conductivity ratioE _xy (=λ _y λ _x ) simultaneously. To confirm the applicability and the accuracy of the present method, measurements were performed on multilayered kent-paper, vinyl chloride, and polyethylene resin film, whose thermal properties are known. From numerical simulations, it is found that the present method can measure the thermophysical properties λ _x , α _x andE _xy within errors of ±6, ±22, and ±5%, respectively, when the measuring errors of the peak heat flux, the heating radius, and the surface temperature rise are assumed to be within ±2, ±3%, and ±0.2 K, respectively. This method could be applied to the measurement of thermophysical properties of biological materials.