A Model for Evaluation of Effective Thermal Conductivity of Periodic Composites with Poorly Conducting Interfaces

This paper presents a new micromechanical extension of the parametric finite-volume theory for evaluation of effective thermal conductivities of periodic unidirectional fiber reinforced composites. Such materials are assumed as composed of repeating unit cells with arbitrary internal architectural arrangements of fiber coated by thin interphase with low thermal conductivity. The parametric homogenization approach uses quadrilateral subvolumes for discretization of the repeating unit cell microstructure, thereby allowing an efficient modeling of the details of fibers with arbitrarily shaped cross sections. The interphases are replaced by imperfect interface elements with continuity in normal heat flux and discontinuity in temperature. The performance of the homogenization model is demonstrated for several numerical examples, including two-and three-phase composites with regular squared and hexagonal arrays of fibers. The ability of the model to accurately predict the effective thermal conductivity of those composites is demonstrated by means of comparisons of results obtained using finite-element and analytical solutions.