The effect of heat-transfer passages on the effective thermal conductivity of high filler loading composite materials

A model of heat-transfer passages is proposed to evaluate the effective thermal conductivity of high filler loading composite materials. Influences of the filler orientation and distribution on the effective thermal conductivity are discussed. By using the proposed model of heat-transfer passages, the parallel conduction model and the series conduction model can be formulated as a single unifying equation. The evaluated thermal conductivity of simple cubic lattice structure composites is compared with different models as well as numerical approaches. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.