A Method of Measuring the Thermal Conductivity of Solid Materials by Transient Hot Wire Method of Comparison

As an application of the usual hot wire method, a method of determining the thermal conductivity of the specimen is discussed theoretically, in which the hot wire is sandwiched between a plate-type specimen and a reference material of the known thermal conductivity. It is found that when the thermal conductivity of the reference material is known the thermal conductivity of the specimen can be determined theoretically just as in the case of applying the usual hot wire method to a homogeneous material. The error and the reproducibility of the experimental values by this method are within ±4 % and ±1.5 % of the thermal conductivities of standard materials respectively and this method is found very good.