Predictions of the effective thermal conductivity for aerogel-fiber composite insulation materials using lattice Boltzmann method

Effective thermal conductivity of aerogel-fiber composite insulation materials were often investigated with simplified models using equivalent circuit method in previous studies. In this paper a random generation method for fibers structure is proposed and different fiber-aerogel structures are reproduced. Then a 3-D lattice Boltzmann method is proposed to computed the effective thermal conductivity of the composite insulation material. The present results agree well with the theoretical results and experimental results. It indicates that the present model can predict well the effective thermal conductivity of fiber-aerogel composite insulation materials.