Determination of Thermal Conductivity of Material Using Fin Analysis with Offline Software Assistance

The project demonstrates the use of fin analysis as one of the possible ways for determination of thermal conductivity of material. In the experimental set-up, a suitably designed oil reservoir is used as a heat source. An Aluminium rod is used as reference material and the provision is made in the reservoir to attach a test rod of which thermal conductivity is to be determined. A Multipole Digital Temperature indicator with four PT-100 thermocouples are used to measure the temperatures. The geometries of the test and reference rods are mandatory to be exactly same for analysis. A small software package "THERMOSOFT" is developed using Visual Basic 6.0 in which the temperature readings are to be entered manually to get the thermal conductivity of test material.