Simultaneous Measurement of Temperature Dependent Thermophysical Properties

A new evaluation method for a transient measurement of thermophysical properties is presented in this paper. The aim of the research was to couple a new automatic evaluation procedure to the BICOND thermophysical property measurement method to enhance the simultaneous determination of the temperature dependent thermal conductivity and volumetric heat capacity. The thermophysical properties of two different polymers were measured and compared with the literature data and with the measurement results that were done by well-known, traditional methods. The BICOND method involves a step-down cooling, recording the temperature histories of the inner and the outer surfaces of a hollow cylindrical sample and the thermophysical properties are evaluated from the solution of the corresponding inverse heat conduction using a genetic algorithm-based method (BIGEN) developed by the authors. The BIGEN is able to find the material properties with any kind of temperature dependency, that is illustrated through the measurement results of poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) and polyamide (PA) samples. (C) 2011 The Japan Society of Applied Physics