Numerical Investigation of Anisotropic Conductivity of Date Palm Fiber Bundle Composite

Abstract

Date palm fiber bundle includes lumens in solid region, which present low thermal conductivity than that of fiber bundle. In this work, the transverse thermal conductivity of date palm fiber bundle was determined by numerical software to investigate the relation between the bundle fiber and the solid region thermophysical properties. Therefore, the results determined from the numerical investigation were compared to the analytical model to prove the numerical model developed in this study. In this context, numerical simulation of thermal conductivity was performed by the numerical finite element method by COMSOL software. To verify the developed models, the bundle fiber and solid region thermal conductivity relation were determined. Quadratic and Cubic polynomial expressions, were used to study the influence of the normalized conductivity of the bundle fiber and the solid region of the composite material and to evaluate the composites thermal conductivity. Influence of lumen on the thermal conductivity was also investigated in this work. The results indicate that the bundle fiber thermal conductivity is much less than that of the solid region thermal conductivity. This one depends on pore dimension, but not on distribution and shape of pore. The numerical results obtained from the model developed in this study are compared with analytical model to validate this model. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted with the models to investigate how changes in the values of important variables, such as thermal conductivity and volume fraction of the constituent, can affect the effective thermal properties of the composite.