A thermal diffusivity determination method using thermography: Theoretical background and verification

Theoretical bases of the author’s method destined, in a perspective, for isotropic material thermal diffusivity in situ measurements are presented in the work. The method employs the properties of general solution of the heat equation in a situation when convective boundary conditions according to Newton’s law of cooling hold on a surface of body and temperature of its surroundings is constant. It was elaborated so as to use data from thermographic measurements of heat propagation on a specimen plane surface which is generated pointwise by a low-power thermal impulse source. The work also includes the illustrative computational example and experimental verification conducted on the cubic specimens of cement mortar and foamed polystyrene.