Thermal conductivity of functional fibrous inhomogeneous materials

The study focuses on developing new methods for assessing the effective properties and modeling the thermal conductivity of fibrous composites with functional fibers for lightning protection systems on aircraft. The aim is to create more efficient and lightweight composites to enhance flight safety and reduce maintenance costs. The research methodology involves analyzing two types of whiskerized interphase layers in composites and modeling their thermal conductivity using a two-step homogenization procedure. The results indicate that composites with functional fibers can significantly outperform classical composites in terms of thermal conductivity. For composites where the whiskerized layer is formed by randomly grown and interwoven carbon nanotubes, the effective thermal conductivity in the plane perpendicular to the fiber axis and in the direction along the fiber can exceed those of classical composites by more than 2 and 1.2 times, respectively. For composites where the whiskerized layer consists of carbon nanotubes grown perpendicular to the fiber surface, these values can exceed those of classical composites by more than 3 and 1.1 times, respectively. Such findings suggest the potential use of functional composites as an effective replacement for metallic meshes in lightning protection systems on aircraft.