Experimental and numerical investigation of a thermal conductivity in the thermally drained carbon-fiber/epoxy composite materials for aeronautical applications

The study focuses on the development of novel composite material with good transverse thermal conductivity able to dissipate the heat. This material will be associated with a cooling loop for transferring the heat from electrical equipment to the composite panel thermally drained and which posed at the fuselage of the aircraft. To achieve this goal, an extensive research was conducted in the thermal field leading to design a novel composite structure. The thermal conductivity of the composite materials selected in this work were assessed through experimental tests. Here, the material thermal conductivity was evaluated using measurements of density, thermal diffusivity, and specific heat. The thermal performances of material were described by the nature of constituents and reinforcement architecture. The current research highlights the influence of adding nickel coated carbon and nickel-plated copper wires on the braided composites. The results indicate that the High Tensile Strength (HTS) carbon braided manufactured with nickel-plated copper wires presents higher in-plane thermal conductivity (in direction parallel of the fibers) when comparing to HTS carbon and HTS carbon braided manufactured with nickel coated carbon. To gain more insight, a numerical model, based on the Finite Element Method was built. Besides, it helps to reduce the experimental matrix protocol. The results obtained by numerical and experimental investigation showed good correlation, which allowed to validate the numerical approach. In the end, the numerical model validated were used to optimize the structure of the composite material.