A NUMERICAL ON HEAT CONDUCTIVITY BEHAVIOR OF ZIRCONIA FILLED EPOXY COMPOSITES

A numerical simulation of the heat-transfer process within epoxy matrix composite filled with micro-sized zirconia 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 zirconia content ranging from about 1.41 to 11.31 volume fraction 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 zirconia in the epoxy matrix. The simulated values are compared with calculated keff values obtained from other established correlations such as Rule-of-Mixture (ROM), Maxwell's model and Lewis Neilson model.