Nonlinear Thermal Analysis of Carbon Nanotube Composites by Element Free Galerkin Method

Abstract

This article presents the nonlinear thermal analysis of carbon nanotube (CNT)-based composites by element free Galerkin method. The thermal conductivity of the nanotube has been taken as a function of temperature and is assumed to vary linearly with the temperature. Picard and two false-transient approaches (quasi-linearization and predictor-corrector) have been chosen to obtain the nonlinear solution. A cylindrical representative volume element (cylindrical RVE) has been used to evaluate the thermal properties of the composites. The temperature and heat flux distributions have been obtained and are plotted at two typical locations of RVE. Present computations show that the addition of 14.2% (by volume) of CNT with constant thermal conductivity increases the equivalent thermal conductivity of the composite by 335%, whereas the same amount of CNT addition with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity increases the thermal conductivity of the composite by 337.2% for the Picard, 337% for the quasi-linearization scheme, and 337% for the predictor-corrector method.

This work was supported by CLUSTER of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.