The Study On Thermal Conductivity Of Polymer/Metal Composite Materials

Heat conductive materials, which widely used in the fields like electronic information, electrical engineering and heat transfer engineering, are required high thermal conductivity, excellent electrical insulation, corrosive resistance, chemical stability, mechanical properties and so on. Metal materials have high thermal conductivity and excellent mechanical properties, but have poor electrical insulation and corrosion resistance. Polymer materials’properties are contrary to metal materials’. According to the requirement in above fields, the domestic and international research is using high thermal conductive filler (such as metal oxide and metal nitride) as heat transfer channel in polymer to improve it’s thermal conductivity. The advantages of the method are that it can be processed conveniently and easily. However, effect of improving thermal conductivity is not very good. And the polymer’impact and tensile performance descend obviously as the fillers were filled largely in polymer.In this paper, the advantages of metal materials and polymer materials are combined, metal/unsaturated polyester (UP) sandwich composite material was prepared to use as heat conductive material to solve the problem of thermal conductive polymer. Unsaturated polyester (UP) was used as electrical insulating surface and metal wires were used as the heat transfer channel in polymer to improve the capacity of polymer thermal transmission. Firstly, a60x40x50mm quadratic form model was designed by Pro/E software. The steel heater was located in the bottom of the model. Metal wires are embedded in the model in horizontal and vertical direction. Then, the model was imported into the ANSYS finite element analysis software to study the affect of metal diameter, wire materials and vertical and horizontal arrangement on thermal conductive capacity of composite through the method of analyzing the maximum temperature of model. Finally, the different metal wire diameter and arrangement simulation results ware verified by experiment. Follow conclusion can be obtained:(1) The simulation and experimental results showed that exist of steel wires in UP can improves the capacity of composite thermal transmission. The capacity of composite thermal transmission increases with increase of metal wire’diameter. Composite’s equivalent thermal conductivity is two to four times more than pure UP. The error between experimental date and simulation date is6.08%.(2) The simulation results showed that the capacity of composite thermal transmission increased with increase of metal thermal conductivity. Composite’s equivalent thermal conductivity is0.74W/m·K which reinforced with copper wires. It is three times more than pure UP. But when the thermal conductivity of metal is greater than237W/m-K, capacity of composite thermal transmission dose not improves obviously.(3) The simulation and experimental results showed that the capacity of composite’s thermal transmission improved obviously with the increase of steel wires’number in the vertical direction of the model, Composites’ equivalent thermal conductivity are0.35W/m-K and0.52W/m-K respectively which reinforced with8and24steel wires. The metal wires’ arrangement in the horizontal direction of the model had little effect on the capacity of composite’s thermal transmission, all of Composites equivalent thermal conductivity are0.42W/m-K which reinforced with2to8steel wires. The error between experimental date and simulation date is3.33%and4.42%in vertical and horizontal direction respectively.