Identification of the anisotropic thermal conductivity by an inverse solution using the transient plane source method

Abstract

The identification of the anisotropic thermal conductivity of material was performed using the transient plane source (TPS) method coupled with an inverse solution. The proposed method requires three measurements to be performed on three orthogonal planes of the cubic samples. Transient finite element analysis was used to solve a direct problem: three-dimensional heat conduction in anisotropic media due to a circular planar heat source. 3D printing technology was used to manufacture two sets of samples, isotropic samples were used to identify intrinsic properties of the polymer, and samples with specially designed anisotropic microstructure were used for the identification of an anisotropic conductivity tensor by the proposed method. To validate obtained results, the thermal conductivity was calculated using a finite element solution for a periodic unit cell, representing the microstructure of the material. Good agreement was observed between conductivity values obtained by two different methods, with a difference of ≤10 %.