A novel carbon nanofibre/phenolic nanocomposite coated polymer system for tailoring thermal behaviour

Carbon nanofibre (CNF)/phenolic nanocomposite coatings were applied to the phenolic substrate for tailoring thermal behaviour under rapid temperature changes. A finite element (FE) model was developed in this work for transient thermal analysis of coated samples. The effects of thickness and CNF content of the CNF/phenolic nanocomposite coating on reducing temperature gradient field within the samples as well as transient time to steady state were investigated. Temperature-dependent thermal properties including thermal conductivity and heat capacity of phenolic and its nanocomposites containing 2, 4 and 16 wt% CNF were experimentally determined and employed in the FE analysis. The results showed that the temperature gradient field and transient time within the polymers can significantly be decreased by using a CNF/phenolic nanocomposite coating.