Handbook: Thermal analysis in practice: tutorial examples

Before you can begin to develop a method, you must be clear about the information and the quality of the data you want to obtain from a sample. This very often determines the possible techniques and methods that can be used…

The development and validation of methods is of major importance in today’s quality assurance systems in research and production. The starting point is usually a draft method that is then optimised and validated in several iterative steps. The final result is a validated method that can be used as part of a standard operating procedure (SOP). The development and validation of a measurement procedure is time-consuming and costly. This means it is important to start right from the beginning with a good draft method. The following sections systematise the development of thermal analysis methods and discuss the most important aspects involved.