Measurement 134 (2019) 673–678

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Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

Determination of thermal diffusivity of Basalt fiber reinforced epoxy

composite using infrared thermography
V. Kalyanavalli, T.K. Abilasha Ramadhas, D. Sastikumar ⇑
Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli 620 015, Tamil Nadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In recent years, there is a great demand for ecofriendly, light weight and cost effective composites. Basalt
Received 6 June 2017 fiber is one such naturally available fiber which offers exceptional properties over glass fibers. In this
Received in revised form 30 July 2018 study a Basalt fiber reinforced composites were fabricated by vacuum bagging technique. Thermal prop-
Accepted 2 November 2018
erties of these composites were determined using infrared thermography. In-depth and in-plane thermal
Available online 3 November 2018
diffusivity were determined by using pulse thermography and space resolve method, respectively. The in-
plane thermal diffusivity was determined in the transmission and reflection modes. In-depth thermal dif-
Keywords:
fusivity was validated with Light flash method.
Basalt fiber reinforced composites
Thermal diffusivity
Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Space resolved method
Infrared thermography
Non-destructive testing

1. Introduction The present study focuses on the thermal characterization of

basalt composites by infrared thermography. Basalt composites
Recently much attention is focused towards development of sus- are anisotropic in nature, thus understanding their principal ther-
tainable, ecofriendly reinforced composites with natural fibers. mal diffusivities are of prime importance. So far, much work has
Basalt is one such fiber of interest due its cost-effective and excep- not been reported on the thermal properties of basalt composites.
tional mechanical and thermal properties [1–8]. Basalt fibers are Thermography (Laser flash and space resolve method) is used on
non-combustible with high chemical stability and good resistance basalt composite specimen and their in-depth and in-plane ther-
to harsh environments [9–13]. In general, these fibers are very good mal diffusivities are determined.
substitute to glass fibers as reinforcing material in composites.
Extensive studies have been done to know the mechanical behavior 2. Theory
of basalt reinforced laminate under various conditions [14–18]. The
effect of impacts and imperfections caused on basalt laminates are Thermal diffusivity is given by
characterized by nondestructive techniques like ultrasound, acous-
tic emission and infrared thermography [12,19,20]. a ¼ j=qC q ð1Þ
For any composite understanding of thermal properties are
highly essential for the applications. Many experimental investiga- where a, q, j and Cp are the thermal diffusivity, density, thermal
tions and numerical modeling have been done on the composites conductivity and specific heat capacity of the material, respectively.
to determine the thermal parameters such as thermal diffusivity,
thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity. Infrared (IR) ther- 2.1. Determination of in-depth thermal diffusivity: Laser flash method
mography is widely used for thermal characterization of materials
and many works have been reported (TWI method, one side flash In this method [26], the front surface of the specimen is heated
method, grid-flash thermography) to determine the thermal prop- by a short heat pulse Q and the temperature rise in the rear surface
erties of materials [21–25]. Laser flash method proposed by Parker of the specimen with respect to time t is determined. The temper-
et al. [26], is widely used for determining the in-depth thermal dif- ature rise is given by the relation,
fusivity of materials and Space-resolved method is used for deter- "  2 2 #
mining the in-plane thermal diffusivity [27–30]. X
1
n p at
T ðL; t Þ ¼ Q=qCpL 1 þ 2 n
ð1Þ exp ð2Þ
n¼1 L2
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sasti@nitt.edu (D. Sastikumar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2018.11.004
0263-2241/Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
674 V. Kalyanavalli et al. / Measurement 134 (2019) 673–678

where a, q, Cp and L are the thermal diffusivity, density, specific 2Q

T ðr; L; tÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
heat capacity and thickness of the material, respectively. The e p3 t 0 1
Eq. (2) could be normalized in terms of the maximum temperature
X
1 2  
½ ð2n  1ÞL  1 2r2
of the rear side (Tm). It is considered that  exp@  Aexp  2
n¼1
4at R2 þ 8at R þ 8at
Q
Tm ¼ ð3Þ
qC p L ð8Þ

where e, L, R, t and a are the thermal effusivity, specimen thickness,

L2
tc ¼ ð4Þ radius of the heat beam, time and thermal diffusivity, respectively.
a In this method, the spatial temperature profile of the heat spot
where tc is the heat diffusion time in the specimen. on the specimen, is a Gaussian function and its broadening ‘b’ over
Substitution of Eqs. (3) and (4) in (2) the cooling period, is related to the thermal diffusivity as [27]
X  
T 1
t ðnpÞ2
b ¼ R2 þ 8at
2
U ðL; t Þ ¼ ¼1þ2 ð1Þn exp ð5Þ ð10Þ
Tm n¼1
tc
Cernuschi et al. [27] has neglected the heat losses exhibited due
and graphically represented in Fig. 1.
to convection and radiations in Eq. (10), whereas Pech-May et al.
Parker et al. proposed a heat pulse method to determine the
[29] has shown that Eq. (10) is valid even in the presence of heat
thermal diffusivity of a material [26]
losses by convection and radiation mechanisms.
a ¼ 1:388L2 =p2 t0:5 ð6Þ
where t0.5 is the time required for the rear side temperature to reach 3. Experimental details
half of the maximum temperature rise, which is obtained from the
plot between U(L,t) and t. The equations (5) and (6) could be used 3.1. Sample preparation
for finding the thermal diffusivity when there is no heat losses
due to radiation and convection mechanisms. Thermal diffusivity A plain bi-directional woven basalt fiber of surface weight
could also be obtained by graphical fitting of the experimental data 200 g/m2 was used. Epoxy resin (Araldite LY 556 I) and the hard-
with the equation (5) [28]. ener Aradur (HY 951) were mixed in the ratio of 10:1 and used
as matrix. Basalt fiber reinforced composites of thickness 3 mm
2.2. Determination of in-plane thermal diffusivity: Space resolve were fabricated by a hand lay-up process followed by vacuum
method bag molding. Specimen were cured for 24 h in room temperature
and coated with a black paint of matt finish to enhance the emis-
The temperature rise at the front and rear surface of an infinite sivity of the surface. Specimen of dimension 150  90  3 mm
plate of thickness L by a spatially Gaussian shaped heating pulse were taken for the studies.
could be described by heat conduction equations [27–29] as The density of the specimen was determined by weight and vol-
ume method and found to be 1670 kg/m3. Specific heat capacity
2Q was determined by a Differential Scanning Calorimeter (NETZSCH
T ðr; 0; t Þ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
e p3 t 0 1
DSC 200F3) and found to be 847 J/kg.K at 28 °C. The BX53M OLYM-
X
1 2   PUS optical microscope was used to obtain the micrograph of the
½ ð n  1 ÞL  1 2r2
 exp@  Aexp  2 specimen.
n¼1
4at R2 þ 8at R þ 8at

ð7Þ 3.2. In-depth thermal diffusivity – pulse thermography

In pulse thermographic method, the laser heat source is

replaced by high energy flash lamps. This method is widely
acclaimed and has gained popularity because of its ease of experi-
mentation and the accessibility of entire surface for diffusivity
determination.
Fig. 2 shows experimental (Transmission method) set up used
for the determination of in-depth thermal diffusivity. Xenon flash
lamp (Hensel) was used as a heating source and a short-range
infrared camera (FLIR SC 7500), having a resolution of 25 mK,
was used to record thermal images. The camera has a focal plane
array of 320  256 pixels and images were recorded at a frame rate
of 50 Hz. The specimen was heated with a flash lamp (6 kJ for a

Sample
Computer

IR Camera
Pulse Lamp

Fig. 2. Experimental setup for the in-depth thermal diffusivity by transmission

Fig. 1. Dimensionless plot of rear surface temperature history [28]. mode using pulse thermography.
 V. Kalyanavalli et al. / Measurement 134 (2019) 673–678 675

pulse duration of 2 ms) and the thermal images were recorded (for 4.1. In-depth thermal diffusivity
20 s) at the rear side of the specimen at six different areas. The
thermal images recorded were processed using Altair software Fig. 5 shows the rise of temperature at the rear surface of the
for determining the in-depth thermal diffusivity. The thermal dif- specimen after the flash excitation and also fitting graph obtained
fusivity of the specimen was also determined using Light flash using the Eq. (5) with the experimental data. In-depth thermal dif-
apparatus (NETZSCH LFA 467 HT Hyper Flash). fusivity was determined by finding the parameter (tc = L2/a) from
the graphical fitting. The experiment was repeated at four different
locations with two trials and their average thermal diffusivity with
3.3. In-plane thermal diffusivity – Space resolved method their uncertainty were found (0.228 ± 0.02 mm2/s) (Table 1). The
uncertainty in the measurements was determined using the Type
Space resolved method [27] was used for finding the in-plane A analysis [32]. The thermal diffusivity of the specimen was deter-
thermal diffusivity of the Basalt specimen in both the reflection mined from a commercially available equipment (Light Flash appa-
and transmission modes. Fig. 3 shows the experimental setup used ratus) also which was about 0.213 mm2/s.
for the transmission mode. Halogen lamp (1000 W) was used as a
heating source. A circular aperture was placed in front of the halo-
gen lamp and the light was focused using a convex lens. A light
spot of radius about 5 mm was obtained, which was used for heat-
ing the sample [24,27]. Thermal images were recorded with infra-
red camera. The distance between the camera and the sample was
about 350 mm, which corresponds to pixel element (0.33 mm) of
the camera. The sample was heated for the duration of 2 and 4 s
in reflection and transmission mode, respectively and the temper-
ature rise was in the range of 1–2 °C. The thermal images were
recorded for 20 s after the heating.

4. Results and discussion

Fig. 4 shows the optical micrograph of the surface of the speci-

men. It is seen that there are many black spots in the micrograph
and appears to be the pores [31].

Computer
Sample
Lens
Fig. 5. Normalized temperature Vs time at the rear surface of the specimen.

Table 1
Comparison of in-depth Thermal Diffusivity for Basalt composite.
IR Camera Halogen
Circular aperture Technique Thermal diffusivity(mm2/s)
Lamp
Light flash apparatus 0.213 ± 0.01
Fig. 3. Experimental setup for the in-plane thermal diffusivity measurement by Pulse Infrared Thermography 0.228 ± 0.02
transmission mode.

Fig. 4. Micrograph of the specimen.

676 V. Kalyanavalli et al. / Measurement 134 (2019) 673–678

Fig. 6. Temperature variation along x-direction (a) and y direction (b) with Gaussian plot for 2 s.

Fig.7. (a & b) Gaussian plots in x-direction for different times in reflection mode.

(a) reflection mode (b) transmission mode

Fig. 8. Experimentally determined Gaussian spot widening parameter b2 as a function of time and its corresponding fitted straight line.

It is seen that there is a difference of about 7% in the thermal
diffusivity obtained experimentally compared to that of equip-
ment. In the flash method, the study was carried out in a vacuum
chamber, whereas, in the pulse thermography, the experiment was
carried out at ambient conditions. The difference may be due to
heat losses in the experiment by the convection.
4.2. In-plane thermal diffusivity
Fig. 6(a and b) shows temperature profile observed on the heat-
ing spot along x and y directions over the specimen and their cor-
responding Gaussian fit for the first time instance of the heating. It
could be seen that the temperature rise was within range of 1 °C.
 V. Kalyanavalli et al. / Measurement 134 (2019) 673–678 677

5. Conclusions

Thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity of the basalt rein-

forced composites were determined using IR imaging. Basalt rein-
forced composites of thickness 3 mm were prepared by a vacuum
bagging method. In-depth and in-plane thermal diffusivities were
determined using pulse thermography and space resolved meth-
ods, respectively, which are found to be about 0.09 and
0.228 mm2/s. In-depth and in-plane thermal conductivities are
found to be about 0.322 and 0.127 W/m.K. The thermal properties
of the prepared basalt fiber reinforced epoxy composite, are lower
than that of well-known glass and carbon reinforced composites.
Basalt reinforced composites could be used as thermal insulating
materials.
Fig. 9. Comparison of diffusivity in x and y directions for different experimental
trials.
Acknowledgement

Table 2
The authors are very thankful to TEQIP (Technical Education
In-plane Thermal Diffusivity of a Basalt composite. Quality Improvement Programme) for providing funds to carry
out this research work.
Mode of Operation In-plane Thermal
Diffusivity (D) mm2/s
Reflection Mode Dx (along x axis) 0.0970 References
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