Development of a Single-Sided Guarded Hot Plate Apparatus for Thermal Conductivity Measurements

Abstract

This work presents the development of an experimental set-up for measurements of thermal conductivity of solid materials, such as ceramics, polymers, rubbers, glasses, biological materials, etc. whose thermal conductivity lies in the approximate range between 0.1 and 2 W/mk The set-up was designed on the principle of the single-sided guarded hot plate method. In order to find the optimal design for generation of traceable 1-D heat flux through an investigated 300 mm x 300 mm specimen, a numerical heat transfer finite element method analysis was performed. The principal components of the measuring apparatus, such as hot plate with thermopile, cold plate, and auxiliary hot plate, were constructed according to the obtained results of simulations. Software for the control of experiment and data acquisition was developed using the LabVIEW programming environment.