Thermal Conductivity

THB is the abbreviation for “Transient Hot Bridge”, a bridge circuit signifying high precision and fast measurement of thermo-physical characteristics: Thermal conductivity (TC), Thermal diffusivity (TD) and specific thermal capacity.

The bridge circuit is embedded in a membrane sensor. For measuring it is surrounded by the material to be measured. In case of bulk material or liquids the probe has to be immersed into it. In case of solid material the sensor is simply placed between two sample halves with one plane surface and fixed to ensure a good contact to the surface. The probe then is connected to a defined electric current generating heat of the internal resistors which is used for measurement and evaluation. By means of special algorithms the material properties TC, TD and SHD are calculated.

Application areas are all materials (solid and liquid) with dependency on their thermo-dynamic properties, e. g. materials for thermal insulation or thermal transfer.
Although this method provides more precise results than comparable systems, a measurement takes typically less than 3 minutes (conventional systems need several hours).

The overall fast and precise measurement method can easily be executed by unskilled operators.