Analysis of Different Thermal Conductivity Measurements for Al-Si Casting Alloys

Abstract

Three types of methods, including Laser flash, Hot-Disk, and Wiedemann-Franz law, have been applied for thermal conductivity measurements of Al-Si casting alloys. The first two methods can obtain the thermal parameter directly for specific samples, while the third one calculates the target value by formula containing the electrical conductivity. Thus, the latter is widely used in the foundries because of its convenient and rapid characteristics. The purpose of this paper was to make a polite comparison among them and optimize the key constant C in the Wiedemann-Franz law to improve the calculation accuracy for Al-Si alloys. Measurements were conducted on the same set of specimens of Al-Si-xCu alloys (x ranges from 0.1 wt.% to 2.0 wt.%) at room temperature. The results showed that the measured value of Laser Flash method was well consistent with Hot Disk. While that of the Wiedemann-Franz law was different with them, the average deviation percentages were 2.17% and 2.36% when using empirical constant C (12.6 W/m·K) in the formula. Then, the constant C was modified to 8.4 W/ m·K and the average deviation percentage were decreased to 0.4% and 0.2% respectively. The reason for the differences was analyzed and a thermal conductivity evaluation model was proposed.