Thermal characterization of composites made up of magnetically aligned carbonyl iron particles in a polyester resin matrix

The thermal characterization of composites made up by magnetically aligned carbonyl iron micro-sized particles embedded in a polyester resin matrix is performed using photothermal radiometry technique. The measured experimental data show that the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of the composite, in the direction of the applied magnetic field, increase with the concentration of the particles and are enhanced with respect to their corresponding values for a random distribution of the particles. This thermal enhancement has a maximum at a concentration of particles of 10% and is very low at small and high iron volume fractions, such that for particles concentrations of about 40%, the composite thermal conductivity reduces to its values for random particles. This behavior indicates that for high volume fractions, the effect of the microparticles concentration plays a dominant role over the effect of their alignment. It is shown that the thermal conductivity of the composite can be modeled in terms of the Nielsen model, under an appropriate parameterization of the form factor of the particles. The results of this work could be highly useful for improving the thermal performance of mechanical and electronic devices involving composite materials. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3691592]