Thermal diffusivity of nonflat plates using the flash method.

The flash method is the standard technique to measure the thermal diffusivity of solid samples. It consists of heating the front surface of an opaque sample by a brief light pulse and detecting the temperature evolution at its rear surface. The thermal diffusivity is obtained by measuring the time corresponding to the half maximum of the temperature rise, which only depends on the sample thickness and thermal diffusivity through a simple formula.

Thermal diffusivity measurements of thin plates and filaments using lock-in thermography.

Photothermal radiometry has been widely used to measure the thermal diffusivity of bulk materials. In the case of thin plates and filaments, a one-dimensional heat propagation model including heat losses has been developed, predicting that the thermal diffusivity can be obtained by recording both the surface temperature amplitude and phase profile slopes ("slope method"). However, this method has given highly overestimated values of the thermal diffusivity of poor-conducting films and filaments.