Thermal Conductivities of Unidirectional Materials

Abstract

In this paper the composite thermal conductivities of unidirec tional composites are studied and expressions are obtained for pre dicting these conductivities in the directions along and normal to the filaments. In the direction along the filament an expression is presented based on the assumption that the filaments and matrix are connected in parallel. In the direction normal to the filaments composite thermal conductivity values are obtained first by utiliz ing the analogy between the response of a unidirectional composite to longitudinal shear loading and to transverse heat transfer; second by replacing the filament-matrix composite with an idealized ther mal model. The results of the shear loading analogy agree reason ably well with the results of the thermal model particularly at filament contents below about 60%. These results were also com pared to experimental data reported in the literature and good agreement was found between the data and those theoretical re sults that were derived for circular filaments arranged in a square packing array.