Novel Measurement of Anisotropie Thermal Diffusivity

We describe a method for the measurement of thermal diffusivity of anisotropic materials. The technique uses a single pulse of light from a flashlamp on the front surface of a slap of material, part of which is shadowed by a rectangular mask. By fitting the measured rear surface temperature distributions as a function of time and space to a theoretical model, we obtain the thermal diffusivities in three orthogonal directions