CALORIMETRY OF BUILDING-MATERIALS

Classical adiabatic methods for measuring specific heat in a wide temperature range are very suitable for homogeneous, well defined materials. However, measurements on inhomogeneous materials require large samples, which makes using of adiabatic treatments extremely expensive. In this paper, a nonadiabatic method for determining the specific heat of inhomogeneous building materials within the wide temperature range of -30 to 1200 degrees C is presented. The method is relatively simple, very cheap, and sufficiently accurate for use with building materials. Tests of the new developed method on two typical building materials, concrete and basalt fibreboards, demonstrate the method's applicability to practical measurements.