In the current work, an improved model to estimate the thermal conductivity
of spark plasma sintered nanocomposites is presented. In the developed
model, the thermal conductivity of the matrix was modeled as a function of
the average matrix crystallite size rather than taking a constant matrix
thermal conductivity. The model has been validated against experimentally
measured thermal conductivity of Al2O3-SiC-CNT hybrid nanocomposites. Using
the experimental and modeling results, it was shown that the addition of SiC
and CNT inclusions to alumina resulted in a decrease in its thermal
conductivity. The main reason for this decrease was found to be the
reduction in the thermal conductivity of the alumina matrix itself because
of the reduction in the crystallite size. Additional reduction in the
composite thermal conductivity was due to the matrix-inclusion interface
resistance and porosity. The predicted and measured thermal conductivities
were found to be in good agreement.
Thermal conductivity reduction by nanostructuration in electrodeposited CuNi alloys
