A PC-based Technique to Measure the Thermal Conductivity of Solid Materials

Abstract

A PC-based technique to measure the thermal conductivity of a bulk material using steady-state one-dimensional heat flow technique is developed. The system uses a small metal rod as a sample and PT100 RTD sensors for temperature measurement. The output of the sensor is signaling conditioned and linearised using a special analog hardware. This linearised RTD output is fed to the analog input of the ADC through a multiplexer, which is interfaced to an IBM compatible PC through digital I/O card. A special constant current source circuit is designed for heating the sample. Software is developed in C-language. Thermal conductivity of two samples (Copper and Aluminum) was measured.

Keywords

• Thermal conductivity
• PT100 RTD sensor
• Signal conditioning
• Constant current source