Development of an automated system for the determination of thermal conductivity in granular materials

Abstract

In many devices such as refrigerators, ovens, industrial kitchens, integrated circuits among others, where heat transfer is involved, it is important to know the thermal behavior of the material and the geometric model (cylindrical, spherical, etc.), with which such equipment will be built, to subsequently perform analysis of the parameters evaluated and thus enhance their efficiency. For this reason, it is important to know variables such as thermal conductivity, wall thickness, material, and geometry for new generation equipment. As a result, this work involved the construction of a test bench for the analysis of thermal conductivity in insulating materials, which began with the selection of the components that made up the device, such as resistors, types of thermocouples, specimen geometry, sensors, and finally, the construction of a data acquisition and analysis control system using Arduino and Labview. Subsequently, a device was obtained to measure the temperature in the cylindrical walls with different granular materials. This project was developed in an innovative way, where the thermal behavior of non-pure agglomerated granular materials will generate research in the study area, with the purpose of implementing it in different projects in which heat transfer is involved.