METHOD FOR THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND DIFFUSIVITY MEASUREMENT SUITABLE FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS

A solution method for an inverse heat conduction problem suitable for the indirect measurement of thermal conductivity and diffusivity is described. An application to an expe-rimental case is also presented. The employed method allows to reproduce typical cyclic tem-peratures and heat flow of space and planetary exploration missions. An experimental application to an insulation panel irradiated on a face and cooled on the other one is ana-lyzed. Particular attention is dedicated to uncertainty analysis, employing a Monte Carlo si-mulation in order to propagate all uncertainty sources to the indirect measurement of thermal conductivity and diffusivity. Two different hypotheses on the time correlation of the uncertain-ty sources are analyzed. Results are described and discussed for both hypotheses, allowing to obtain suitable uncertainty values for the desired output quantities.