Assessing predictive schemes for thermal conductivity against diamond-reinforced silver matrix composites at intermediate phase contrast

Predictive schemes for thermal conductivity of composites are assessed in the range of intermediate effective phase contrast against experimental values on diamond particle-reinforced Ag–11 at.%Si composites. Thermal conductivity of the composites varied between 410 and 780 W (m K)−1, depending on the reinforcement size and the heat treatment condition. The differential effective medium scheme yields consistent predictions while the Maxwell mean field scheme increasingly underestimates the thermal conductivity of the composite as the effective phase contrast exceeds roughly four.