A steady-state technique of heat-transfer measurement has been developed based on the method of Seban, Emery & Levy (1959) whereby energy is dissipated by the Joule effect in a thin metal sheet on the surface of a model. For the present application, use was made of very thin but mechanically resistant films of metal of very nearly constant thickness, obtained by a simple mirror-silvering technique. The present investigation was prompted by the desire to make very local measurements of heat transfer for application in regions where large variations in convective heat flux and therefore in temperature could be expected.

Comparison between theory and experiment has been made in the simple case of a flat plate with constant heat flux for which a rigorous computation could be made based on the theory of Chapman & Rubesin (1949). The model was so conceived that the heat losses were small enough to be neglected. Therefore no corrections, which are often inaccurate, were needed for the experimental results, contrary to what is generally done when using other techniques for heat-transfer measurements. The excellent agreement between theory and experiment gives complete confidence in the method. The theoretical analysis showed that the measurements are simply related to the results that could be obtained in the case of an isothermal surface, because of the constant ratio that exists between the corresponding heat-transfer coefficients.