Thermal diffusivity measurement of insulating material using infrared thermography

The article presents the results of research developing methods for determining the coefficient of thermal diffusivity of thermal insulating material. This method applies a periodic heating as an excitation and an infrared camera is used to measure the temperature distribution on the surface of tested material. In simulation study, the usefulness of known analytical solution of the inverse problem was examined using a three-dimensional model of the phenomenon of heat diffusion in the sample of tested material. To solve the coefficient inverse problem, an approach using artificial neural network is proposed. The measurements were performed on an experimental setup equipped with a ThermaCAM PM 595 infrared camera and frame grabber. The experiment allowed to verify the chosen 3D model of heat diffusion phenomenon and to determine suitability of the proposed test method.