Effective thermal conductivity of composite: Numerical and experimental study

In this paper, thermal properties of composites are investigated numerically and experimentally. In the numerical study, finiteelements method is used to modelize heat transfer and to calculate the Effective Thermal Conductivity (ETC) of the composite for three elementary cells, such as simple cubic (SC), body centered cubic (BCC) and face centered cubic (FCC). The effect of the filler concentrations, the ratio of thermal conductivities of filler to matrix material and the Kapitza resistance of the contact inclusion/matrix on the effective conductivity was investigated. A periodical method was used to measure simultaneously thermal conductivity, specific heat and diffusivity of the composite consisting of epoxy resin matrix filled with brass spheres. A comparison between the numerically calculated thermal conductivities, measured and analytical ones for various samples is made and the significance of the findings will be discussed in the paper.