ISSN: 2277-9655 [Prakash* et al., 6(9): September, 2017] Impact Factor: 4.116 IC™ Value: 3.00 CODEN: IJESS7 http: // www.ijesrt.com © International Journal of Engineering Sciences & Research Technology [498] IJESRT INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCES & RESEARCH TECHNOLOGY A NUMERICAL ON HEAT CONDUCTIVITY BEHAVIOR OF ZIRCONIA FILLED EPOXY COMPOSITES Prem Prakash *1 , Irshad Ahmad Khan 2 Mechanical Engineering Department, Sagar Institute of Research and Technology, Bhopal, India DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.995968 ABSTRACT A numerical simulation of the heat-transfer process within epoxy matrix composite filled with micro-sized zirconia particles using finite element method is proposed in this paper. Three-dimensional spheres-in-cube lattice array models are constructed to simulate the microstructure of composite materials with zirconia content ranging from about 1.41 to 11.31 volume fraction and the effective thermal conductivities of the composites are estimated. A commercially available finite-element package ANSYS is used for this numerical analysis. The result shows that the effective thermal conductivity ( k eff ) increases with increase in the volume fraction of the zirconia in the epoxy matrix. The simulated values are compared with calculated k eff values obtained from other established correlations such as Rule-of-Mixture (ROM), Maxwell’s model and Lewis Neilson model. KEYWORDS: Polymer matrix composites, epoxy, zirconia, thermal conductivity, numerical simulation. I. INTRODUCTION Modern day electronic devices are packaged with many polymeric materials, such as electronic molding compound (EMC) and glob top encapsulation [1]. Usually thermosets like epoxy or polyester resin and thermoplastics like polypropylene (PP) or polyamide systems are used for encapsulating a variety of electronic components because of their high thermal stability, moisture resistance and low cost. But unfortunately, these resins have poor thermal properties like high coefficient of thermal expansion and low thermal conductivity [2]. The high thermal expansion coefficient of plastic resin is lowered with the addition of ceramic powder filler, like fused silica or quartz. But silica-filled epoxy resins are less desirable for the encapsulation of silicon integrated circuit (IC) chips because of silica’s low thermal conductivity. Since recent applications of polymers as heat sinks in electronic packaging require new composites with relatively high thermal conductivity, it is important to enhance the conductivity of the polymers [3]. Improved thermal conductivity in polymers may be achieved either by molecular orientation or by the addition of conductive fillers. Thermally conducting polymer- matrix composites are becoming increasingly important for electronic packaging because the heat dissipation ability limits the reliability, performance and miniaturization of electronics. By the addition of fillers to plastics the thermal behaviour of polymers can be increased significantly. Such filled polymers with higher thermal conductivities than unfilled ones become more and more an important area of study because of the wide range of applications, e.g. in electronic packaging in applications with decreasing geometric dimensions and increasing output of power, like in computer chips or in electronic packaging [4]. Reports are available in the existing literature on experimental as well as numerical and analytical studies on thermal conductivity of some filled polymer composites. Most of the work was conducted taking metal powder as filler material. In this series, Rusua et al. [5] first used zinc powder as filler material and found appreciable increase in the thermal conductivity. Later Mamunya et al. [6] also reported the improvement in electrical and thermal conductivity of polymers filled with metal powders. Further Boudenne et al. [7] used aluminium as filler material in polypropylene matrix for improvement in thermal conductivity of the matrix body. Later they further went with similar study and this time they had taken copper as filler material for the improvement of thermal conductivity of polypropylene composites [8].