Abstract
Thermal conductivity displays a key role in design of engineering structures where, thermal stresses resulting from heat and temperatures are of concern. Significant efforts were made to measure the thermal conductivity of different materials. For thermal conductivity characterization of soil samples it is essential to have very flexible set-up. Hence, this paper provides details about indigenously developed experimental setup for thermal conductivity measurement. The design of this newly developed setup is based on the basic principle of steady state heat flow. This experimental setup is designed in order to measure the thermal conductivity of various materials such as soils, rocks, concrete and any type of unbonded and bonded materials. In this paper, initially the theoretical background of the measurement techniques and the principle of heat flow are described, followed by design description and working procedure. The design has been kept very simple, adjustable for varying type and size of specimens and easy to operate with excellent level of accuracy as evident from system calibration. The accuracy and precision of the newly developed setup was verified by testing reference materials of known thermal conductivity and in the test results a high correlation coefficient (R^2 = 0.999) between experimental data and fitting curve was achieved.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONT understanding the energy partitioning in the soil profile. The thermal conductivity/resistivity has significant applications in geotechnical engineering, agricultural engineering and climatology
Thermal conductivity displays a key role in design of engineering structures where, thermal stresses resulting from heat and temperatures are of concern
The thermal conductivity exhibits an important role in the design of engineering structures where thermal stresses and temperature are of concerns [1]
Summary
T understanding the energy partitioning in the soil profile. The thermal conductivity/resistivity has significant applications in geotechnical engineering, agricultural engineering and climatology. The amount of heat energy (Q) transferred across a material is directly proportional to the area of cross section (A) and the temperature gradient T and inversely proportional to the sample thickness (L) and can be expressed as given in Equation (1), and the coefficient of thermal conductivity (K) can be expressed as shown in Equation (2). Guarded heat flow technique is more appropriate to characterize low thermal conductivity materials for building insulation materials It works on the principle of steady-state transfer of heat through the known thickness of the test specimen between a hot plate and a cold plate. Some of these methods are suitable for measurement for particular materials especially for materials which include either ceramics, polymers, metals, alloys, refractories, carbons and it is very expensive to design and manufacture the experimental setup [16]
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