Effect of inclusions on effective thermal conductivity estimation of two-phase materials

In this article, the collocated parameter models are used to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of the two-phase materials including the effect of various inclusions in the unit cell. The algebraic equations are derived using unit cell based isotherm approach for two dimensional spatially periodic medium. The geometry of the medium is considered as a matrix of touching and non-touching in-line octagon and hexagon cylinders. The models are used to predict the thermal conductivity of numerous two-phase materials (maximum conductivity ratio of 1000 and concentration ranging between 0 and 1). The estimated thermal conductivity data is in good agreement with the experimental data within ± 15.84%, ± 18.14% maximum deviation respectively from octagon and hexagon cylinders for various two-phase systems. The obtained results are compared with a wide range of experimental data for various geometrical configurations to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of two-phase materials.