New bounds on the effective thermal conductivity of N -phase materials

Abstract

Based on the perturbation solution to the effective thermal conductivity problem for an N -component material, we derive new third- and fourth-order bounds for the effective thermal conductivity of the composite. The new third-order bounds are accurate to third order in | ϵ a — ϵ b |, where ϵ a is the thermal conductivity of phase a and require a total of ½ N ( N — 1) 2 third-order correlation parameters in their evaluation. For two-phase composites, these bounds require only one geometrical parameter and are identical to Beran’s bounds. For N ≽ 3, the third-order bounds use the same information as Beran’s bounds, but always more restrictive than Beran’s bounds. The new fourth-order bounds are accurate to fourth-order in | ϵ a - ϵ b | and require an additional ¼ N 2 (N — 1) 2 fourth-order correlation parameters. For N = 2, only two parameters are needed, and the fourth-order bounds are shown to be more restrictive than the third-order Beran’s bounds and the second-order Hashin-Shtrikman’s bounds. The applica­tion of the third-order bounds to a spherical cell material of Miller is illustrated.