Study on Effective Thermal Conductivity of Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abstract

The present paper deals with the effect of volume fraction of fibers on the effective thermal conductivity (keff) for polymer composites. This work sees an prospect of enhancement on insulation capability of a typical fiber reinforced polymer composite. A mathematical correlation for the effective thermal conductivity of polymer composites reinforced with fiber is developed using the law of minimal thermal resistance and equal law of the specific equivalent thermal conductivity. To validate this mathematical model, one set of epoxy based composite, with fiber content ranging from 0 to 15.5 vol % have been prepared by simple hand lay-up technique. For one set of composite, natural fiber i.e. sisal fibers are incorporated in epoxy matrix .Thermal conductivitie of these composite samples are measured as per ASTM standard E-1530 by using the Unitherm™ Model 2022 tester, which operates on the double guarded heat flow principle. Further, finite element method (FEM) is implemented to determine the keff of such composite numerically using a commercially available finite element package ANSYS. Experimentally measured values are then compared with the values obtained from the proposed mathematical model, the numerical values and also with models established earlier, such as Rule-of-Mixture (ROM), Maxwell’s model, Nielson-Lewis model and Bruggeman model. From the experimental and numerical output, it can be seen that with an increase in fiber content, there is gradual decrease in effective thermal conductivity value composite. This comparison tells that while none of the established models are correctly predicting the effective thermal conductivity of the composite, the results obtained from the proposed model fits well with the experimental data. This study shows that the effective thermal conductivity reduces quite significantly as the fiber loading in the composite in
creases. 5A reduction of about 17.35% in the value of thermal conductivity is recorded with addition of 15.5
vol % of sisal fiber in epoxy resin.and also the CTE of the volume fraction of sisal fiber filled epoxy composites are measured with thermal mechanical analyser(TMA)andThe glass transition temperature (푇푔) of the composite samples are measured with a Perkin Elmer DSC-7 thermal mechanical analyser (TMA) is shows that A decrease of CTE by 5% and increase of 12.65% in Tg .study validates the proposed model and also proves that finite element analysis can be an excellent methodology for such investigations. With light weight and reduced heat conductivity, these insulative, fibers reinforced polymer composites finds their potential applications in insulation boards, food containers, thermo flask, building materials etc.