A Numerical Study on Heat Conductivity Characterization of Aluminium Filled Polypropylene Composites

A numerical simulation of the heat-transfer process within polypropylene matrix composite filled with micro-sized aluminium particles using Finite Element Method is proposed in this paper. Three-dimensional spheres-in-cube lattice array models are constructed to simulate the microstructure of composite materials with aluminium content ranging from about 1.5 to 42 vol% and the effective thermal conductivities of the composites are estimated. A commercially available finite-element package ANSYS is used for this numerical analysis. The result shows that the effective thermal conductivity (Keff) increases with increase in the volume fraction of the aluminium in the composites. The simulated values are compared with calculated Keff values obtained from other established correlations such as Rule-of-Mixture (ROM), Maxwell’s model and with published experimental results. This study reveals that the incorporation of aluminium particles results in enhancement of thermal conductivity of polypropylene thereby increasing its heat transportation capability. It is found that with incorporation of about 42 vol% of 100 micron sized aluminium particles thermal conductivity of the composite increases from 0.239 W/m-K to 0.875 W/m-K. This study also shows that the effect of particle size with same volume percentage on thermal conductivity is marginal.