Effect of radiative heat loss on thermal diffusivity evaluated using normalized logarithmic method in laser flash technique

Abstract

The laser flash technique is a standard method to measure the thermal diffusivity of solid samples especially at high temperatures. To understand the reliability of thermal diffusivity evaluation at high temperature for solid samples with low-thermal-diffusivity values, we analyzed the effect of radiative heat loss using the logarithmic method. The results revealed that when the Biot number was 0.1, the deviation from the input thermal diffusivity value was approximately −1.6%. In addition, when an aluminum silicate (AS) sample was heated to 1,273 K, the maximum deviation was approximately −0.35%. In contrast, the difference between the input value and the thermal diffusivity evaluated by the halftime method when AS was heated to 1,273 K was approximately 2.38%. Thus, since the effect of radiative heat loss was found to be negligible, it is concluded that the normalized logarithmic method should be very useful for the thermal diffusivity analysis of low-thermal-diffusivity solid samples at high temperature.

Keywords

• thermal diffusivity
• solid sample
• high temperature
• radiative heat loss
• laser flash technique
• normalized logarithmic method
• 65.40.-b (thermal properties of crystalline solids)