Round-Robin Test for Measurement of Thermal Expansion of Solid Materials by Thermomechanical Analyzer

Abstract

A round-robin test of the thermal expansion measurement for solid materials using thermal mechanical analysis (TMA) has been carried out. Fourteen participating laboratories of the test have measured linear expansion coefficients of single crystalline silicon and glass-like carbon, both of which have been established as the thermal expansion standard materials by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), in the temperature range from room temperature to 1000 K. For both sample materials, the average data of linear expansion coefficients measured by all the participants were less by over 5 % than the corresponding reference data determined by AIST using the interferometric dilatometer. The analysis of all experimental results reveals that the measurement uncertainty of the results was mainly due to the reference samples used in the calibrations of TMA. To improve the accuracy of the measurement, it is very important to use reference samples having the same dimensions as the sample and similar characteristics for thermal expansion of the sample.