A method of measuring the effective thermal conductivity of thermoplastic foams

Abstract

An inverse method for determining the in-plane effective thermal conductivity of porous thermoplastics was implemented by coupling infrared thermography experiments and numerical solution of heat transfer in straight fins having temperature-dependent convective heat transfer coefficient. The obtained effective thermal conductivity values were compared with previous results obtained using a numerical solution based on periodic homogenization techniques (NSHT) in which the microstructure heterogeneity of extruded polymeric polyethylene (PE) foam in which pores are filled with air with different levels of open and closed porosity was taken into account and Transient Plane Source Technique (TPS) in order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method. The new method proposed in the present study is in good agreement with both NSHT and TPS. It is also applicable to structural materials such as composites, e.g. unidirectional fiber-reinforced plastics, where heat transfer is very different according to the fiber direction (parallel or transverse to the fibers).