Mori-Tanaka Based Estimates of Effective Thermal Conductivity of Various Engineering Materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extended Mori-Tanaka micromechanics model to accurately estimate the effective thermal conductivity of complex, real-world composite materials, accounting for interface imperfections and particle variability.

Contribution

It extends the Mori-Tanaka method to include imperfect interfaces, particle orientation, and size effects, validated through finite-element analysis and experimental data.

Findings

Model accurately predicts thermal conductivity of composites.

Extensions improve estimates for imperfect interfaces.

Validation confirms model's applicability across materials.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple micromechanics-based model to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of real-world macroscopically isotropic materials of matrix-inclusion type. The methodology is based on the well-established Mori-Tanaka method for composite media reinforced with ellipsoidal inclusions, extended to account for imperfect thermal contact at the matrix-inclusion interface, random orientation of particles and particle size distribution. Using simple ensemble averaging arguments, we show that the original Mori-Tanaka relations are still applicable for these complex systems, provided that the inclusion conductivity is appropriately modified. Such conclusion is supported by the verification of the model against a detailed finite-element study as well as its validation against experimental data for a wide range of engineering material systems.