Measuring the Mechanical Response of Materials at Extreme Temperatures with Localized Heating

The development of next-generation technologies for aerospace, energy, and advanced manufacturing is predicated on the availability of structural materials capable of maintaining their shape and avoiding failure in extreme thermal environments. Modeling and optimizing thermomechanical response and survivability requires accurate experimental measurement of salient material properties at ever-higher temperatures. Furnace-based heating, integrated with traditional mechanical load frames, has been the historical standard for decades, but the complexity, time per test, and cost of conducting furnace-based experiments increases exponentially with temperature. Localized heating provides a pathway to precise thermal control, exceptional spatial selectivity, and rapid heating and cooling rates (>1,000°C/s), all of which are needed to conduct low-cost, high-throughput measurements of ultrahigh-temperature properties. This review starts with a broad survey of three prominent localized heating methods for thermomechanical testing applications, resistance, induction, and laser heating. We then evaluate each technique based on temperature range, heating uniformity, resultant thermal gradients, and benchmarking with ASTM standard procedures. Among these, resistive heating, commonly referred to as Joule heating, emerges as a particularly versatile method.