Heat pulse measurement of thermal properties: an improved fitting technique

Abstract Transient heat pulse techniques allow specific heat C and thermal conductivity κ to be determined from a single measurement. In the main these parameters have previously been derived using linearizations of simplified solutions to the diffusion equation in restricted time regimes. We present a numerical fitting technique which allows a fit to be made to the full solution of the diffusion equation across all times of the measurement. This technique also accounts for and allows measurement of the boundary resistance at the clamped end of the sample, an effect which can cause significant distortion of the measured temperature profile. This distortion can lead to significant errors in values of C and κ derived using other methods.