Automatic FEM model generation for evaluating thermal conductivity of composite with random materials arrangement

A new modeling method has been developed to generate FEM model of composite with complicated materials arrangement, especially random arrangement. The structure of a composite is considered to be composed of some very simplified basic models. For each basic model, the dispersions are assumed to have the same geometry and with one of the following three types of orientation: one dimensional, two dimensional random and three dimensional random. When the geometry, orientation type and number of dispersion are given, the computer randomly generates the position and orientation for each dispersion, and creates the geometrical model and FEM mesh. The effective thermal conductivity of composite has been calculated based on the models generated with this method and compared to the values obtained by analytical method and experimental measurement. The influence of some factors such as model size and mesh refinement on the reproducibility and accuracy of calculation is discussed.