The Application of the Finite Elements Method in the Transient Measurements of Thermophysical Parameters

The finite elements method (FEM) is used to improve the extended dynamic plane source (EDPS) method to obtain more accurate values of the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the specimen. A method of transformation of the FEM-calculated response into an analytical form, which can be used in fitting the measured temperature response, has been described and verified. Furthermore, a modification of the EDPS method designated as EDPS1 is designed, where only one piece of specimen is used. Since there is no analytical formula for the new method, the analytical formula for EDPS is used. Hence, the initial estimates of the specimen parameters for the EDPS1 method are very rough and the FEM numerical evaluations must be repeated several times until the estimates reach relative errors of around 1%.