Modelling Heat Transfer of Carbon Nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper presents a finite element model to simulate heat transfer in carbon nanotubes, revealing their unique cooling properties due to anisotropic thermal conductivity, which is crucial for thermal management in nanotechnology.

Contribution

It introduces a 3D finite element approach for anisotropic heat transfer in nanotubes, incorporating upscaled thermal conductivity from molecular data.

Findings

Nanotube arrays exhibit distinctive cooling behavior.

Anisotropic thermal conductivity influences heat dissipation.

Model aids in designing nanotube-based thermal management systems.

Abstract

Modelling heat transfer of carbon nanotubes is important for the thermal management of nanotube-based composites and nanoelectronic device. By using a finite element method for three-dimensional anisotropic heat transfer, we have simulated the heat conduction and temperature variations of a single nanotube, a nanotube array and a part of nanotube-based composite surface with heat generation. The thermal conductivity used is obtained from the upscaled value from the molecular simulations or experiments. Simulations show that nanotube arrays have unique cooling characteristics due to its anisotropic thermal conductivity.