Increasing the accuracy of structure function based thermal material parameter measurements

The Structure functions based evaluation of the thermal transient measurements is now a broadly accepted way for the characterization of the time dependent behavior of the heat flow path. The usual way of generating structure functions considers one main heat flow path. By using a large mathematical tool set it generates for this path the Rth-Cth map of the structure. This enables easy detection of partial thermal resistances in the heat flow path, with which we can determine the values of, e.g,. interface thermal resistances, local effective thermal conductivity values, etc. The accuracy that we can obtain with this material parameter measuring methodology is in the order of 20%. In this paper, we present a methodology that enhances the accuracy of the structure function based material parameter measuring methods. In this procedure, on one hand, we measure the thermal transients for the system to be characterized and on the other hand we measure the "parasitic" heat flow path, that influences our measurement. The material parameters are calculated by appropriately modifying the measured results with the data of the parasitic heat flow path. In this paper, we present this methodology with mathematical details, and prove it with measured results.