Thermal conductivity of spark plasma sintering consolidated SiCp/Al composites containing pores: Numerical study and experimental validation

A simple model was introduced for describing the effect of porosity on the effective thermal conductivity of spark plasma sintered (SPS) consolidated SiCp/Al composites in terms of an effective medium approximation (EMA) scheme. Numerical results of the present model were compared to an existing model of two-step Hasselman-Johnson approach and experimental data. Both models yielded very close predictions, which provided a satisfactory agreement to the experimental data, especially for the composites with porosity below 10%. At high levels of porosity the model predictions were slightly higher than the experimental values. These two models were further extended to account for the thermal conduction properties of porous composites with a multimodal size distribution or multiphase reinforced mixtures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.