Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Thermal properties of materials, thermal conductivity chief among them, are essential values needed byx000D
engineers and scientists when designing thermal systems, understanding thermal behaviour and developingx000D
novel thermal technologies. C-Therm, a Canadian company, is a world-leader in the design of thermal propertyx000D
characterization systems, i.e., systems that measure thermal conductivities and other thermal properties ofx000D
materials. Such a measurement is far from trivial since a thermal experiment needs to be performed every timex000D
a measurement is made and analysed after the fact using advanced heat conduction science to extract thex000D
property values. In other word, those properties are not measured directly, they are inferred from the results ofx000D
a very accurate test, accurate data and complex mathematical understanding of what heat transfer is.x000D
C-Them is working to improve their technology in order to remain at the forefront of their industry by movingx000D
towards a methodology that will greatly reduce the amount of calibration require and will provide results basedx000D
strictly on first principles. The challenge being to still offer results fast out of their systems (completex000D
simulation of the thermal process could take minutes to hours to obtain, while their client expect results inx000D
seconds). The goal of this research project is to assist C-Therm in the development of this novel methodologyx000D
by numerically studying the behaviour of their sensor and the various samples C-Therm is intended to apply itx000D
to (thin films, vacuum insulation panels, etc). Using advanced numerical simulations, the complete heatx000D
transfer rates and temperature fields in the overall system can be obtained and studied to extract the mostx000D
important feature of the heat transfer process and gain a greater understanding of the impact of the variousx000D
parameters that can be varied in the experiment (related to physical dimensions and layout of the sensor and thex000D
overall operation of it: heat flow, temperature). Those results are also of prime importance to C-Therm as itx000D
will serve to validate the analytical methodology they are developing in house.