Different methods for estimating thermal diffusivity of a heat process

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to compare three different methods for determining the thermal diffusivity of a one dimensional heat diffusion process. A [email protected][email protected]?m's method, an on-line least squares method and a maximum likelihood method have been applied to data obtained from experiments on a long copper rod. The accuracy, the amount of computation, the storage capacity and in general the advantages and the limitations of the different methods are discussed.