TY - JOUR Y1 - 2022/02// A1 - Pope, I A1 - Hidalgo, JP A1 - Hadden, RM A1 - Torero, JL N1 - This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher?s terms and conditions. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2021.107324 N2 - When a thermocouple is embedded in a material of lower thermal conductivity, under certain heating or cooling conditions, the presence of the thermocouple can distort the surrounding temperature field. As a result, the measured temperatures may be very different to the ?undisturbed? temperatures that would exist without the thermocouple. This study presents the results of a sensitivity analysis of key factors influencing this thermal disturbance. A series of heat transfer models and accompanying experiments are used to demonstrate the effects of thermocouple geometry, contact conditions, thermal properties, and heating regime on the temperature measurement error. These tailored finite element models were validated against experiments on vermiculite insulation board, which confirmed the accuracy of the models in simulating the thermal disturbance for inert heating conditions. Also, a simplified version of the finite element model was used to calculate the thermal disturbance error for a number of conditions, and subsequently to predict a range of corrected temperatures for the experimental measurements. This correction method was found to greatly improve the accuracy of the results for inert heating conditions. Since the method does not account for the effects of moisture in heat transfer, a creep of uncorrected errors could be observed. ID - discovery10137124 KW - Thermocouple KW - Temperature measurement KW - Heat transfer KW - Thermocouple error KW - Error correction KW - Fire AV - public IS - Part A SN - 1290-0729 VL - 172 JF - International Journal of Thermal Sciences TI - A simplified correction method for thermocouple disturbance errors in solids ER -