Measurement of thermal properties of solids using photoacoustic sand photothermal techniques

We describe the use of a photoacoustic and a photothermal technique to measure thermal diffusivity and the product of density and specific heat capacity of solid materials, respectively. We show that these techniques produce satisfactory results on materials of known thermal properties. These measurements are automated on a personal computer. The values for thermal conductivity and thermal effusivity of the samples atp derived from the measured values for thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity. These techniques are scarcely known in the literature in spite of the fact that they provide relatively good accuracy with a minimum of experimental equipment.