Graphene in aerospace composites: Characterising thermal response

Abstract

In this work, a numerical model is presented to describe the thermal response of a graphene/polymer nanocomposite. The approach is based on the multi-scale method and consists of a unit cell and a Representative Volume Element (RVE) built on a finite element interface. At the unit cell level, the material's nano-characteristics (filler geometry, phase thermal properties, interfacial properties) are employed to calculate the local thermal conductivity. The material's architecture is modelled at the RVE level by incorporating the previously obtained local thermal properties. A statistical sample was studied and the average thermal response was compared to experimental data.

Tensile and flexural behaviour of a graphene/epoxy composite: experiments and simulation

“…GnP particle on the simulation of electrical conductivity and permittivity, and of [30] on the estimation of the thermal conductivity of graphene/polymer nanocomposites. The RVE is meshed with n elements (equation (6)).…”

“…Therefore, each side is divided by n 1/3 . Based on the work conducted for the prediction of the electrical response [29] and thermal conductivity [30], which accounted for the different filler distribution on approaching nanocomposite architecture, Gaussian distribution has been chosen to approach the filler dispersion with the reinforcement volume fraction being the distribution mean value (μ) and its standard deviation (σ) set as a parameter to be studied. The effective elastic modulus is modelled as before by fixing the one side and pulling the other in the opposite direction.…”

Infrared thermography for void mapping of a graphene/epoxy composite and its full‐field thermal simulation

“…The multidimensional/scale FE model, following the previous research of Manta et al, consisted of an RVE micro‐scale model, which predicted the effect of the air cavity on the local thermal response, and a full‐square macroscale model for the calculation of the full thermal diffusivity field. The simulation models were developed in the commercial FE package ANSYS 16.2.…”

“…The detected thermal response (temperature field) is used to identify and map the location, the size, and the shape of voids. Next, a multidimensional/scale finite element (FE) model, following a previous research, is presented to simulate the steady‐state and transient thermal response of a GNP/epoxy composite containing voids. It builds a representative volume element (RVE), studying the effect of the cavity on the local thermal response, and a larger‐scale rectangular specimen to simulate experimental thermal diffusivity obtained with the flash method.…”

Laser‐aided curing of a GnP/epoxy nanocomposite optimised by multiscale finite element analysis

“…Knowledge from all these seemingly irrelevant works has been combined to form a multiscale finite element model to simulate the curing of graphene/polymer nanocomposite. At first, a unit cell consisting of the GnP particle and the liquid epoxy is considered to determine the temperature‐dependent thermal conductivity and specific enthalpy.…”