The thermal conductivity of particulate composites by the use of a polyhedral model

In this paper, the authors introduce a body-centered polyhedral model capable of simulating the periodic structure of particulate composites, in order to estimate the thermal conductivity of a general class of this type of materials. This model takes into account the arrangement of internal and neighboring particles in the form of three distinct deterministic configurations, along with the concept of interphase on the thermal and mechanical properties of the composite, which is assumed to be macroscopically homogeneous and isotropic. Next, by means of this advanced multilayer model, an explicit analytical expression to evaluate the thermal conductivity of this type of composites is derived. The theoretical predictions were compared with the experimental results found in the literature, as well as with the theoretical values yielded by some reliable formulae derived from other workers, and a reasonable agreement was observed.