Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

The Effect Of Polydispersivity On The Thermal Conductivity Of Particulate Thermal Interface Materials, Sasanka Kanuparthi, Ganesh Subbarayan, Thomas Siegmund, Bahgat Sammakia

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

A critical need in developing thermal interface materials (TIMs) is an understanding of the effect of particle/matrix conductivities, volume loading of the particles, the size distribution, and the random arrangement of the particles in the matrix on the homogenized thermal conductivity. Commonly, TIM systems contain random spatial distributions of particles of a polydisperse (usually bimodal) nature. A detailed analysis of the microstructural characteristics that influence the effective thermal conductivity of TIMs is the goal of this paper. Random microstructural arrangements consisting of lognormal size-distributions of alumina particles in silicone matrix were generated using a drop-fall-shake algorithm. The generated microstructures were …