Estimation of the local thermal conductivity field of a plane heterogeneous medium with infrared image processing and the volume-averaging method

The estimation of local thermophysical properties can be of paramount importance in the study of heterogeneous media. The volume-averaging method is used to implement an estimation method of a local thermal conductivity field of a two-dimensional heterogeneous medium. The method is tested with experimental transient temperature fields, obtained with a calibrated sample with an infrared camera. A large number of images was processed in the transient state. The same intrinsic stationary field is estimated from each image. By means of repeated estimations, this method reduces the measurement noise influence.