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THE RELIABILITY OF MEASUREMENTS OF THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF REFRACTORY BRICK *
Author(s) -
Austin J. B.,
Pierce R. H. H.
Publication year - 1935
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1151-2916.1935.tb19351.x
Subject(s) - brick , thermal conductivity , reproducibility , materials science , reliability (semiconductor) , refractory (planetary science) , mineralogy , composite material , statistics , mathematics , geology , thermodynamics , physics , power (physics)
In the report on the cooperative tests on heat transfer through refractories presented at the Symposium in Cincinnati last February two important points, (1) the reproducibility of the measurement on a given brick in the same apparatus and (2) the possibility of variation in the brick tested at the different laboratories, were not adequately discussed. A thorough test of these points would require a large number of measurements on one brick and a rather large number of specimens, with a statistical treatment of the results, but a preliminary study on a smaller amount of data has led to some useful conclusions. The examination of a set of silica brick similar to those used in the coöperative tests and of the set of silica brick used by Wilkes in his measurements shows that with our apparatus, which is of the Wilkes' type, the individual readings taken on a single brick do not deviate from the average of a number of readings by more than 5%; and the real variation in the thermal conductivity of these brick appears to be less than can be detected in our apparatus. It is concluded, therefore, that the source of the differences existing in the values reported by the several cooperating laboratories lies not in the sample but almost entirely in the methods employed. In addition to the results on the silica brick mentioned, data are given for the thermal conductivity of three brands of silica splits and for fireclay splits. A detailed description of the apparatus is also given.