Effect of Reinforcement Nonuniformity on Effective Thermal Conductivity of Composite

Abstract

In composites reinforced by whiskers or fibers, clustering of the reinforcements often occurs. In this work, we studied the effect of these clustering phenomena on effective thermal conductivity of the composites. An analytical model has been developed based on effective medium theory to calculate the effective thermal conductivity of composite with consideration of the nonuniformity of reinforcement distribution. With this model the thermal conductivities of SiC whisker reinforced aluminum matrix composites have been calculated, and the results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The dependences of composite thermal conductivity on parameters such as the shape of the reinforcement cluster, the volume fractions inside and outside cluster, etc. have been investigated.