Thermal Conductivity of Cellular Metals Measured by the Transient Plane Sour Method

The thermal conductivity of a collection of cellular metals has been measured by the Transient Plane Source (TPS) method. Using this method, it has been possible to cover different volumes of selected samples and to study their in-homogeneities from their surface to their inner part. Additionally, these samples have been characterized by tomography. The density of the different volumes covered by the heat flow has been calculated from the tomographic slices and it has been related to the thermal conductivity measurements. These results have shown a similar trend to those obtained characterizing the bulk samples. With the TPS method, in combination with tomography, it has been possible to analyse the in-homogeneity of the samples as well as to characterize the thermal conductivity of a single in-homogeneous sample as a complete collection of different porosity specimens.