ABSTRACT
In a thermal characterization experiment, the studied material is stimulated through a steady or transient heat excitation and temperature measurements are compared to a corresponding pertinent model in order to estimate its thermophysical properties. In such an experiment, it is often necessary to set temperature sensors (thermocouples, platinum resistances, etc.) not only at the surface of the sample but also inside the material. It is usually assumed that measurement noise only affects the temperature signal given
by the sensors. This corresponds to the case where the location of each of these sensors, for example, the
hot junction in the case of a thermocouple, is known with a high enough precision that allows neglecting the effect of the location error on the values of the estimated parameters (thermal diffusivity, specific heat, conductivity, contact resistance, heat transfer coefficient, etc.). The interested reader can refer to Chapter 7, where classical estimation methods based on this assumption are presented.
