Measurement of the Heat Transfer Properties of Carbon Fabrics via Infrared Thermal Mapping

The aim of this paper is to determine the heat transfer properties of biaxial carbon fabrics of different architectures, including non-crimp stitch bonded fabrics, plain, twill and satin woven fabrics. The specific heat capacity was determined via DSC (differential scanning calorimetry). A novel method of numerical analysis of temperature maps from a video using a high-resolution thermal camera is investigated for the measurement of the in-plane and transverse thermal diffusivity and conductivity. The determined thermal conductivity parallel to the fibers of a non-crimp stitch bonded fabric agrees well with the theoretical value calculated employing the rule of mixtures. The presence of voids due to the yarn crossover regions in woven fabrics leads to a reduced value of transverse thermal conductivity, especially in the single ply measurements of this study.

Automated summary

This paper aims to determine the heat transfer properties of biaxial carbon fabrics with different architectures. The specific heat capacity was determined using differential scanning calorimetry, while a novel method of numerical analysis using a thermal camera was investigated for measuring thermal diffusivity and conductivity. The results showed that the thermal conductivity parallel to the fibers of a non-crimp stitch bonded fabric matched well with the theoretical value, while voids in woven fabrics led to reduced transverse thermal conductivity.