Simultaneous measurement of thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and volumetric specific heat

The recently presented pulse hot wire/hot strip (PHS) technique to measure the thermal diffusivity is re-investigated in order to derive working equations to additionally determine the thermal conductivity and the volumetric specific heat of solids and fluids. In the framework of this analysis it is found that these three properties related to heat transfer can be derived independently from each other from only one PHS run. A PHS arrangement is easily realized by adding two temperature sensors to a simple transient hot wire or transient hot strip setup. Both thermometers' responses to a short heat pulse liberated by the Joule heat source (wire or strip) provide all necessary information to derive the quantities mentioned after an experiment of some 10 seconds. The working equations representing thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and volumetric specific heat are confirmed by measurements on an epoxy resin of accurately known thermal properties.