Measuring thermal conductivities of anisotropic synthetic graphite-liquid crystal polymer composites

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2006

Department

Department of Chemical Engineering; Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Abstract

In this study, synthetic graphite particles were added to a liquid crystal polymer and the resulting composites were tested for both the through-plane thermal conductivity k thru and the in-plane thermal conductivity k in using the transient plane source method. The end use application for these composites is in fuel cell bipolar plate fabrication. The goal of this work was to expand upon a previously developed simple empirical model for the in-plane thermal conductivity, which is easily measured with the transient plane source method. The results show that the square root of the product of the through-plane and in-plane thermal conductivities is an exponential function of the volume percent of filler, φ. As the through-plane thermal conductivity of these composites is accurately predicted with a modified Nielsen model, this empirical relationship can be used to estimate in-plane thermal conductivities for a range of applications.

Publisher's Statement

© 2006 Society of Plastics Engineers. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1002/pc.20231

Publication Title

Polymer Composites

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