Effective thermal conductivity of polymer composites: a review of analytical methods

Polymer composites are widely used in different areas such as the aircraft industry, automotive industry, electronic industry and packaging industry etc. Polymer composites should have various physical, mechanical and thermal properties, within various thermal properties thermal conductivity is an important parameter to simulate heat transfer process and mechanisms in composite materials. This paper deals with various analytical methods and models for determining the effective thermal conductivity of different polymer composite materials for various applications. There are basic models, modified models and semi-empirical models to determine thermal conductivity analytically, which are discussed in brief. After that, the comparison between different models is investigated. Finally different conductive fillers, the effect of their shape, size and volume fraction on the effective thermal conductivity of composite materials are discussed.