Magnetically oriented three-phase composite systems of epoxy resin, aluminum nitride, and nickel have been prepared, the thermal conductivity of composites filled with nickel powder with different particle sizes and content under different applied magnetic fields was studied. The vibrating scanning magnetometer (VSM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were applied to investigate the dispersion of nickel powder in the composites. The results showed that the anisotropic thermal conductivity of the composites treated by applied magnetic field forming chain structure is obtained. The epoxy resin-based composites filled with 30 vol% aluminum nitride with particle size of 1 μm and 2 vol% nickel powder with particle size of 1 μm and aligned with vertical magnetic field have the highest thermal conductivity (1.474 W/mk), which increases the thermal conductivity of the composites by 737% and 58% compared to the pure epoxy resin (0.2 W/mk) and the composites filled with 30 vol% aluminum nitride (0.933 W/mk). In addition, we simulated the influence of nickel powder particles with different particle sizes and arrangements on the thermal conductivity of the composite material in COMSOL Multiphysics software, and the results were consistent with the experimental results.
Keywords: analytical modelling; anisotropy; polymer-matrix composites (PMCs); thermal properties.