Effective thermal conductivity of epoxy matrix composites filled with red mud powder

Abstract

Particulate filled polymer composites with enhanced thermo-physical properties are highly in demand in electronic industry and economically viable and environmentally acceptable solutions for industrial waste like red mud are always encouraged. This project presents a numerical, experimental and analytical investigation on the thermal conductivity enhancement of Red mud filled epoxy composites. Guarded heat flow meter test method is used to measure the thermal conductivity of Red mud powder filled epoxy composites using an instrument UnithermTMModel 2022 according to ASTM-E1530. In the numerical study, the finite-element package ANSYS is implemented to calculate the effective conductivity of the composites. Three-dimensional sphere-in-cube lattice models are used to simulate the microstructure of particle filled composite materials for various filler size and concentration. This study shows that the incorporation of red mud particulates results in the improvement of thermal conductivity of epoxy resin. The experimental conductivity values of composites are compared with the numerically values and it is found that the values obtained using finite element method (FEM) are in proper agreement with the experimental values.