Heat Conduction in Composites
Résumé
In this chapter we present the basics of heat transfer in composites. The first approach, called the effective medium method, averages in a suitable way over the conductivities of the constituents. This gives good results for sufficiently large particles. However, when the particles are smaller than the mean free path of the excitations carrying the heat, the implicit assumptions of the effective medium theory are no longer justified. One must then look at the way the particles scatter the energy carriers.