A method for thermal diffusivity measurement in fluids.

A technique is proposed for thermal diffusivity measurement in fluids. It is based on the Angstrom method, but with excitation of thermal waves by electromagnetic energy absorption and pyroelectric detection. The good agreement between measured thermal diffusivity of air and some test liquids with literature values shows the validity of the method. It is free of some limitations of conventional photopyroelectric technique with length scanning because it is free of moving parts inside the sample and because it avoids problems associated with the non-parallelism between thermal wave generator surface and sensor. It does not require any data normalization procedure or special sample preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]