A simplified approach for heat conduction analysis of CNT-based nano-composites Original Research Article

The unique thermal properties of carbon nanotubes (CNT) may offer possibilities for the development of fundamentally new composite materials. Numerical simulation for such CNT-based composites usually demands extremely large and expensive computer resources. In preliminary computations, temperature distribution in the CNT has been turned out to be almost uniform, due to its exceptionally high heat conductivity in comparison with the host polymer. This feature allows us to considerably simplify the mathematical model of the heat conduction in CNT composites. In the proposed approach, the host polymer is the only domain which is modeled, while the CNTs are treated as heat superconductors with constant and unknown temperatures constrained at their surfaces. As a result, the computational scale is reduced substantially. The hybrid boundary node method is applied in this study. Numerical examples clearly demonstrate the efficiency and sufficient accuracy of the proposed approach.