Numerical investigation of the thermal property of particle filled polymer matrix composite

A representative volume element (RVE) model was developed to investigate the relation between thermal property and microstructure of the particle filled composite. The model was based on two novel algorithms, and was constructed with the same particle spatial distribution structure of the real heterogeneous composite by the introduction of two parameters, i.e. the ratio and the radius of particle-poor region, which both were estimated from SEM micrographs. The model was verified by comparing the predicted and the practical thermal conductivity. It has been found that the simulation results are accurate in the large scale of filler content. The system with non-uniform particle spatial distribution shows higher thermal conductivity than that with random or uniform particle spatial distribution, especially at the high filler volume fraction when conductive pathways or networks form. And at the same filler volume fraction, the thermal conductivity of the composites can be significantly different due to the different particle spatial distributions.