Bayesian estimation of thermal conductivity and temperature profile in a homogeneous mass

International standards propose several methods for measuring thermal conductivity; however, they often require expensive experimental layouts and marginally consider the uncertainty in the estimation procedure. In this article, we propose a temperature transient method and a Bayesian procedure to estimate the thermal conductivity of a homogeneous mass, and to reproduce the entire temperature profile evolution over time by means of latent temperature data. To validate the approach, experiments are conducted giving heating and cooling cycles to a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) specimen. Results show the applicability of the proposed approach and good estimations.