Electrothermomechanical Modeling and Analyses of Carbon Nanotube Polymer Composites

Abstract

A new finite element (FE) modeling method has been developed to investigate how the electricalmechanicalthermal behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT)–reinforced polymer composites is affected by electron tunneling distances, volume fraction, and physically realistic tube aspect ratios. A representative CNT polymer composite conductive path was chosen from a percolation analysis to establish the threedimensional (3D) computational finiteelement (FE) approach. A specialized Maxwell FE formulation with a Fermibased tunneling resistance was then used to obtain current density evolution for different CNT/polymer dispersions and tunneling distances. Analyses based on thermoelectrical and electrothermomechanical FE approaches were used to understand how CNTepoxy composites behave under electrothermomechanical loading conditions.