Mesoscopic simulation of thermal conductivities of 3D carbon nanotubes, graphene and their epoxy resin based composites

The thermal conductivities of the 3D carbon nanotubes (CNTs), CNT/epoxy resin (CNT/EP) composites, graphene/EP composites and CNT/graphene/EP composites are systematically investigated via mesoscopic simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and dissipative particle dynamics (DPD). The effects of the CNT length and overall mass density on the thermal conductivity of the CNTs are discussed. Moreover, the influences of the loading and size of the fillers on the thermal conductivities of the CNT/EP, graphene/EP and CNTs/graphene/EP composites are investigated. The results have shown that introducing the CNT and graphene fillers simultaneously to the epoxy resin can improve the thermal conductivity of the composites most effectively. The study demonstrates that coupled DPD and SPH model is a viable approach to understand the thermal conductivities of nanocomposites at a reduced computational cost compared to full atomistic simulation.