Effective thermal conductivity of composites with anisotropic particles of various shapes embedded in an isotropic matrix

Abstract

The paper demonstrates a method to calculate effective thermal conductivity in a two-phase medium with an isotropic host phase and embedded anisotropic particles. The presented scheme enables easy incorporation of various regular shapes of filler particles if the principal values of their Eshelby tensor are supplied. Basic shapes, such as spheroids, may approximate a wide range of fillers used to enhance thermal conduction, such as polymers filled with highly conductive metal and ceramic powders, graphite and graphene flakes, and nanotubes. Different spatial orientations and sizes of particles may be supplied to the model in the form of probability distributions. The method is well suited to numerical implementation, and the resulting computations are less demanding than popular mesh-based methods, i.e., Finite Volume and Finite Element Methods. It does not include interfacial thermal resistance between particles and matrix, but the addition of this component is planned in future papers.