September 10, 2008 / Vol. 6, No. 9 / CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS 669
Measurement of thermal expansion coefficient of
nonuniform temperature specimen
Jingmin Dai (
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)
1
, Chunsuo Xin (
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1
, and Xiaowa He (
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)
2
1
Department of Automation Measurement and Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001
2
Aerospace Research Institute of Materials and Processing Technology, Beijing 100076
Received February 29, 2008
A new technique is developed to measure the longitudinal thermal expansion coefficient of C/C composite
material at high temperature. The measuring principle and components of the apparatus are described
in detail. The calculation method is derived from the temperature dependence of the thermal expansion
coefficient. The apparatus mainly consists of a high temperature environmental chamber, a power circuit of
heating, two high-speed pyrometers, and a laser scanning system. A long solid specimen is resistively heated
to a steady high-temperature state by a steady electrical current. The temperature profile of the specimen
surface is not uniform because of the thermal conduction and radiation. The temperature profile and the
total expansion are measured with a high-speed scanning pyrometer and a laser slit scanning measuring
system, respectively. The thermal expansion coefficient in a wide temperature range (1000 − 3800 K) of
the specimen can therefore be obtained. The perfect consistency between the present and previous results
justifies the validity of this technique.
OCIS codes: 120.0120, 120.4570, 000.6850, 120.6780.
doi: 10.3788/COL20080609.0669.
In the past decades, most of the accurate measurements
of thermal expansion coefficients at temperatures above
1100 K generally rely on the steady-state techniques
such as push-rod dilatometry, X-ray diffractometry, and
optical comparator methods. The measuring precision
of the steady- state techniques mainly depends on the
degree of keeping uniform temperature of the specimen,
which is hard to realize because of thermal conduction
at ends, especially at high temperature
[1]
. The problem
of nonuniform temperature profile restricts the applica -
tion of those methods at ultra high temperature. With
the rise of pulse heating method and the development of
modern electronics, Righini et al. proposed a new idea
to measure the thermophysical properties by an assumed
function of thermalphysical properties and temperature
according to the rules of ther malphysical varying with
temper atures
[2]
. Moreover, this method was applied to
the measurement of thermal expansion coefficient of a
sp e cimen with a nonuniform temperature pr ofile based
on the apparatus of pulse experiment and a high-speed
scanning pyrometer
[3]
. However, the temperature profile
of the specimen must be measured as quickly as possi-
ble in the transient-state technique in order to minimize
the influence of temperature fluctuation. Based on the
advantages of the steady-state method and the Righini’s
calculation theory of nonuniform temperature profile,
the present paper describes an integration method for
the measurement of thermal expansion coefficient up to
ultra high temperature. The requirement of mea suring
the thermal expansion coefficient of a C/C composite
material can be satisfied with this method.
A method for thermal expansion measurements of a
sp e cimen with nonuniform temperature profile was suc-
cessfully developed
[4]
. Righini assumed that the expan-
sion function in the temperature range of interest may
be represented by a n n th order polynomial constrained
by a reference temperature T
0
f (T ) =
∆L (T )
L (T
0
)
= a
1
(T − T
0
) + a
2
(T − T
0
)
2
+ · · ·
+a
n
(T − T
0
)
n
, (1)
where L (T
0
) is the length of the specimen at T
0
, ∆L (T )
is experimental total e xpansion associated with a partic-
ular temperature profile, a nd T is the ex periment tem-
perature of the spe cimen.
If the experimental temper atures are measured in po-
sitions z
1
, z
2
, · · · , z
M
with equal intervals, the specimen
may be considered as composed of M segments with
equal length of S. These segments are marked as l
i
(i = 1, 2, · · · , M) and the corresponding le ngth at tem-
perature T
0
may be any sizes and they are not necessarily
equal. The relations of these quantities can be expressed
with the following eq uations:
L (T
0
) =
M
X
i=1
l
i
, L (T ) =
M
X
i=1
S = M · S. (2)
The sp e cimen may have an arbitrary temperature dis-
tribution. An overdetermined system may be got if p
profiles are measured (p > n)
∆L
1
= a
1
M
1
P
i=1
l
1i
(T
0
) (T
∗
1i
− T
0
) + · · ·
+a
n
M
1
P
i=1
l
1i
(T
0
) (T
∗
1i
− T
0
)
n
.
.
.
∆L
p
= a
1
M
1
P
i=1
l
pi
(T
0
)
T
∗
pi
− T
0
+ · · ·
+a
n
M
1
P
i=1
l
pi
(T
0
)
T
∗
pi
− T
0
n
, (3)
1671-7694/2008/090669-04
c
2008 Chinese Optics Letters