Thermal conductivity is one of the most important physical properties of a material. However, its experimental evaluation may presents some specific troubles, and high precision in the determination of the factors involved in its calculation is required. Specifically for refractory materials, the experimental technique employed worldwide for thermal conductivity calculations is the hot wire technique, in which the thermal conductivity is calculated starting from the temperature transient generated by an ideal, infinitely thin and long heat source embedded in an infinite surrounding material. In this work comparisons are made when two different techniques for the transient temperature detection are employed: in one of them, the temperature is detected and recorded at the surface of the hot wire (hot wire surface technique), while in the other, the measuring point is located at a fixed distance from the hot wire (hot wire parallel technique). Experimental results show a great advantage when using the hot wire surface technique for materials with thermal conductivity higher than 10 W/mK. The time interval which is taken into account in calculations is bigger than that one that would be employed in the hot wire parallel technique in the same experimental conditions, proportioning in this case higher accuracy and reliability in the experimental results obtained.
hot wire parallel technique; hot wire surface technique; thermal conductivity
