Thermal Conductivity of Suspensions : Measurements and Shape Effects of Suspended Particles on Conductivity

Abstract

Experiments have been carried out to measure the thermal or electrical conductivity or suspensions composed of variously shaped particles dispersed in gelatin gel at volume fractions from 0 up to 0.6. On the basis of these measurements as well as the values previously published by other authors, the dependence of conductivity on the shape of suspended particles is discussed and some of explicit and theoretical expressions proposed up to data are evaluated. For the purpose or predicting the conductivity of suspensions the Bruggemann equation is most promising for spherical dispersion and the Fricke equation is more reliable than others for dispersion of which the shape is significantly different from a sphere, if the shape of suspended particles is well approximated to an ellipsoid.