Technique for direct measurement of thermal conductivity of elastomers and a detailed uncertainty analysis

High thermal conductivity thermal interface materials (TIMs) are needed to extend the life and performance of electronic circuits. A stepped bar apparatus system has been shown to work well for thermal resistance measurements with rigid materials, but most TIMs are elastic. This work studies the uncertainty of using a stepped bar apparatus to measure the thermal resistance and a tensile/compression testing machine to estimate the compressed thickness of polydimethylsiloxane for a measurement on the thermal conductivity, k eff. An a priori, zeroth order analysis is used to estimate the random uncertainty from the instrumentation; a first order analysis is used to estimate the statistical variation in samples; and an a posteriori, Nth order analysis is used to provide an overall uncertainty on k eff for this measurement method. Bias uncertainty in the thermocouples is found to be the largest single source of uncertainty. The a posteriori uncertainty of the proposed method is 6.5% relative uncertainty (68% confidence), but could be reduced through calibration and correlated biases in the temperature measurements.