Simulations on the Accuracy of Laser-Flash Data Analysis Methods

Abstract

The Laser-Flash thermal diffusivity measurement method can be considered one of the most succesful applications of photothermal techniques. This due to the phenomenological and experimental simplicity and ease of reaching better than 1% accuracy over a wide temperature range. The method is based on observing the temperature rise of the sample back face resulting from the absorption of a laser pulse at the other face. There are various approaches for the data reduction and, especially for high temperature measurements where heat loss effects need to be accounted for, they are based on approximations. This is because the inverse function relating thermal properties and heat exchange conditions with the temperature rise temporal shape is not available in closed form. Therefore, detailed error propagation calculations analyses that would take into account all the steps of the data analysis procedures have not in general been performed for data. In this work, simulations of the noise sensitivity and accuracy of selected data reduction schemes were studied using synthetic data. The work was done in connection with the design of a high temperature laser-flash instrument for the measurement of ceramic composites for fusion reactor applications.