Abstract
A common conventional method for measuring thermal diffusivity of materials is a flash method proposed by W. J. Parker et al. (1960). Specimen requirement in this method should be in a disk form. This method is not applicable for a specimen having a ring form such as a piston-ring. The objective of this paper is to propose a new method for measuring thermal diffusivity of piston-ring in real form. This method is derived from unsteady state one dimensional heat transfer problem in straight fin using the Laplace transform of heat conduction equation. Two temperature measurements versus time effected by arbitrary heating are recorded at two different abscissas. By using the Laplace integral of two temperature responses it allows to set out two parameters : thermal diffusivity and Biot number of the system. This method was applied to measure thermal diffusivity of a piston-ring. The result is verified by using Duhamels theorem and shows that the deviation between temperatures recorded and measured is very small.