Thermophysical Property Estimation by Transient Experiments: The Effect of a Biased Initial Temperature Distribution

Table 1

Practical error calculation. Examples for three different materials and experiments. Thermophysical and experimental data needed to compute expected error in reconstructed thermal diffusivity using the diagram of Figure 5.

			Example #1 Light insulation material	Example #2 Pyrex	Example #3 AISI 316 steel
Physical properties
Thermal conductivity	,	W m^−1 K^−1	0.05	1.15	14.0
Specific heat	,	J kg^−1 K^−1	900	775	470
Density	,	kg m^−3	150	2220	8240
Sample thickness	,	m	0.04	0.01	0.01
Temperature control	,	K s^−1	0.01	1.0	1.0
Experiment duration	,	s	3600	20	20
Initial error magnitude	,	K	0.3	0.1	0.1
Calculated data (to be used in association with the diagram of Figure 5)
		m^2 s^−1
			0.83	0.134	0.72
			0.0084	0.005	0.005
Predicted error (from Figure 5 diagram)
			70	2000	90
			0.6%	1.4%	0.4%