Numerical prediction of the thermal conductivity of fibers

The need to determine the thermal conductivity of fibers for design purposes of new composite materials and the inherent difficulties in the direct measurement of the thermal conductivity of fibers motivated the present work due to its importance for energy conservation purposes. In this work, a correlation formula is developed to predict the thermal conductivities of fiber as function of the effective thermal conductivity of a fiber-reinforced composite laminates and their constituents which are easy to measure. The parallel and series thermal models of composite walls have been utilized in developing this correlation equation. The coefficients of this formula can be given as functions of the voids volume fraction for each fiber to resin volume ratio considered. The validity of the models is verified through finite element analysis. This model also shows excellent agreement with the available experimental values.