Use of hollow metallic particles for the thermal conductivity enhancement and lightening of filled polymer

An efficient and economical way to increase thermal conductivity of polymer is to incorporate metallic particles. However, other mechanical or physical properties can be seriously affected. Indeed, due to a much higher density of metal compared to polymer, the adding of metallic particle increases the weight of composite and can prevent its use for transportation application. One way to overcome this drawback is to use hollow metallic particles. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to study and compare the effective thermal conductivity behavior of composites filled with hollow and full particles. A 3D numerical modeling using non-dimensional variables is used and the results are compared to the experimental measurements for both epoxy and EVA polymer composites filled with hollow metallic particles for different sizes and content. The results shows clearly the interest of using hollow particles instead of full ones, for heat transfer improvement and for lightening the composite weight.