An inverse method for the determination of thermal conductivity and thermal contact resistance: Simulated results

Thermal conductivity of polymers and contact resistance at the interface of plastics with other materials are important parameters in the simulation of plastic processing techniques. An inverse procedure is presented for the determination of thermal conductivity and thermal contact resistance of a plastic specimen from transient temperature distribution in a one dimensional heat flow apparatus. The inverse procedure used minimizes a suitably defined sum of squares function to obtain the parameters. The method has been tested using simulated data and results are presented. The procedure is particularly attractive for the study of plastics as it requires no insertion of thermocouples in the plastic and can be applied to thin samples. The method though computationally more intensive compared to steady state methods requires no a priori knowledge of either parameters. Furthermore it would reduce the experimental duration considerably compared to the steady state methods.