Nice experiment. I wonder how the "Ikea Sensuell" would compare, those are also supposed to be 3-ply I believe. From the materials it seems to be using aluminum sandwiched by stainless steel.
I never tried ikea sensuell, but I suspect the result would be in-between that of le creuset and the pots I tested (don't remember the actual name). Main reason being that le creuset has the same material also on the sides, while sensuel seems to have thin sides with 3-layer bottom. That said, it should have more even transfer on the bottom, so definitely an upgrade from pure stainless steel.
Very interesting so thank you. In some ways though, it just creates more questions. I have some tri-layer ikea pans but haven't tested their cooking speed in terms of heat transfer with normal stainless pans. A number of frying pans are made from aluminium (note the correct spelling 😎) albeit with a coating of some sort so you think they would be highly heat conductive. It would be interesting to see how manufacturers design the pots to optimise the technical aspects of material thickness vs thermal conductivity vs weight etc. Cheers
The Ikea's 3-layer products only have aluminium (I got spelling right this time, no?) in the bottom of the pan. For a pan that's enough. The heat flux in this case will be lower than in pure stainless - thin stainless conducts faster than three layers of metal, even if one of them is aluminium. I personally haven't seen coated aluminium (i.e. with painting or enamel), but I've seen it sandwiched between two layers of steel. I'd be cool to test something like that though, it'd be great for quick heat transfer, but it'd be super easy to burn food with it too. Manufacturers have a few things to balance - heat transfer (if that's all you care about - external copper + stainless steel inside is best), heat retention (cast iron wins), price (mass produced stainless steel), balance of good heat and durability (3-layers, but now it's getting expensive), marketing and premium price (5-layers; tbh no idea why anyone would ever want that), etc. The heat conduction through these materials is very well understood though.If you know what heat properties you want to have, you can plug this into "simple" equations and you're done.
Love this.
Nice experiment. I wonder how the "Ikea Sensuell" would compare, those are also supposed to be 3-ply I believe. From the materials it seems to be using aluminum sandwiched by stainless steel.
I never tried ikea sensuell, but I suspect the result would be in-between that of le creuset and the pots I tested (don't remember the actual name). Main reason being that le creuset has the same material also on the sides, while sensuel seems to have thin sides with 3-layer bottom.
That said, it should have more even transfer on the bottom, so definitely an upgrade from pure stainless steel.
Very interesting so thank you. In some ways though, it just creates more questions. I have some tri-layer ikea pans but haven't tested their cooking speed in terms of heat transfer with normal stainless pans. A number of frying pans are made from aluminium (note the correct spelling 😎) albeit with a coating of some sort so you think they would be highly heat conductive. It would be interesting to see how manufacturers design the pots to optimise the technical aspects of material thickness vs thermal conductivity vs weight etc. Cheers
The Ikea's 3-layer products only have aluminium (I got spelling right this time, no?) in the bottom of the pan. For a pan that's enough. The heat flux in this case will be lower than in pure stainless - thin stainless conducts faster than three layers of metal, even if one of them is aluminium.
I personally haven't seen coated aluminium (i.e. with painting or enamel), but I've seen it sandwiched between two layers of steel. I'd be cool to test something like that though, it'd be great for quick heat transfer, but it'd be super easy to burn food with it too.
Manufacturers have a few things to balance - heat transfer (if that's all you care about - external copper + stainless steel inside is best), heat retention (cast iron wins), price (mass produced stainless steel), balance of good heat and durability (3-layers, but now it's getting expensive), marketing and premium price (5-layers; tbh no idea why anyone would ever want that), etc.
The heat conduction through these materials is very well understood though.If you know what heat properties you want to have, you can plug this into "simple" equations and you're done.