Prediction of the transverse thermal conductivity of pitch-based carbon fibers

HS Huang and S Ganguli and AK Roy, JOURNAL OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS, 48, 1383-1390 (2014).

DOI: 10.1177/0021998313486501

In this paper, we utilized a bottom-up method to predict the transverse thermal conductivity of pitched-based carbon fibers. We used molecular dynamics simulations with Green-Kubo formalism to calculate the in-plane thermal conductivity and out-of-plane thermal conductivity of the graphite sheets. The effects of waviness on the thermal conductivity of the graphite sheets were studied by MD simulations. The calculated in- plane thermal conductivity and out-of-plane thermal conductivity of graphite sheets from MD simulations were then used for the prediction of transverse thermal conductivity of the pitch fibers by finite element method. In the finite element simulations, the waviness in the graphite sheets was found to decrease the transverse thermal conductivity of pitch fibers, though not significantly. The defects observed in the pitch fibers were simulated by the damage elements in the finite element analysis. The simulation results showed that the proposed model, in which 12.5% of damage was included, predicted the effective transverse thermal conductivity well compared to the value measured from experiments.

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