Improving the accuracy of the transient plane source method by correcting probe heat capacity and resistance influences

The transient plane source (TPS) method is a relatively newly developed transient approach for thermal conductivity measurement. Compared with the steady-state method, it is fast, and applicable to either solid, liquid or gas state materials; therefore, it has gained much popularity in recent years. However, during measurement, the measured power is influenced by the heat capacity of the electrical isolation films as well as the electrical resistance change of the metallic thin wire of the TPS probes. This further influences the measurement precision. Meanwhile, these two factors have been ignored in the traditional model of TPS developed by Gustafsson. In this paper, the influence of both the heat capacity and the resistance change of the TPS probe on the measured power is studied, and mathematical formulas relating the two factors and their respective corrections are deduced. Thereafter an improved model is suggested based on the traditional TPS model and the above theoretical models. Experiments on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) standard materials have been conducted using a home-made system, including TPS probes, data acquisition module and analysis software. The results show that the improved model can effectively improve the measurement precision of the TPS method by about 1.8–2.3% as evaluated by relative standard deviation.