On the effective thermal conductivity of multiphase composites (Q1081425)

While several micromechanical models have been developed today in the literature for two-phase media, the extent of their applicability to multiphase materials need yet to be investigated. The present paper studies the effective thermal conductivity of multicomponent composites, and concentrates on two methods: (a) the Mori-Tanaka model, (b) the ''generalized self-consistent scheme''. The Mori-Tanaka method of ''back- stress'' previously developed in the context of elasticity of composites is applied here to the conduction problem. The ''generalized self- consistent scheme'', based on a particle-matrix embedding in the effective medium, is studied in this paper in the context of multicomponent media and two variations of this method distinctly different in their imbedding procedure are proposed. Numerical results are given for three-phase composites illustrating and comparing the proposed methods.