Why this test matters
Heat management plays a critical role in product performance, safety, and lifespan. Poor thermal behavior can lead to overheating, reduced efficiency, premature failure, or safety risks. The Hot Disk test helps companies understand how well materials conduct and store heat, essential when designing products that must dissipate heat or maintain thermal stability. Our TPS 3500 equipment is especially valuable for continuous fibre composites, where thermal conductivity can vary significantly depending on fibre orientation, a distinction a standard single-direction measurement would completely miss. This test applies to metals, plastics, and composites, and matters most in demanding applications such as aerospace, sports equipment, mobility, and electronics, where precise thermal management is critical.
How the test works
The Hot Disk method, also known as the Transient Plane Source (TPS) technique, places a flat heating sensor in contact with, or between, two faces of a sample. A controlled thermal pulse is applied, and the sensor tracks how the temperature evolves over time. Analysing that response gives you thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and volumetric heat capacity. Our TPS 3500 equipment suits a wide range of materials, including polymers and other amorphous materials, metals, ceramics, and continuous fibre composites, where thermal conductivity often depends on fibre orientation. Thanks to its planar measurement system and analysis software, the TPS 3500 can characterise materials with multi-directional thermal anisotropy, measuring conductivity along multiple axes, longitudinal and transverse, for example, giving you a detailed picture of heat flow through complex composite structures.
What you learn from this test
This test goes beyond a single thermal conductivity value. For composite materials, it measures effective thermal conductivity in different directions, letting you compare reinforcement configurations or fibre layups, evaluate how fibre orientation affects overall thermal performance, and support the design of composite parts with genuinely optimised thermal and mechanical behaviour. For continuous fibre composites specifically, this data supports thermal design optimisation, characterisation of high-performance reinforcements by thermal load direction, validation of anisotropic numerical models such as FEA or CFD, and confident selection of manufacturing strategy and fibre orientation. For other materials, you still receive precise thermal conductivity, diffusivity, and heat capacity values that support material selection, product optimisation, and technical documentation for customers or certification bodies.
