The Path Traversal Method for the Orientation Information of Fillers in Composites

People’s lives have changed dramatically at an unprecedented rate with the application of filler-reinforced composites in lots of fields, especially in thermal field. Meanwhile, stricter requirements on the structure and performance of the filler-reinforced composites are requested to ensure stable operation and service. numerous studies focus on the regulation of fillers to construct special microstructures or orientations of fillers in the filler-reinforced composites to improve the thermal, mechanical, and electrical performances. Hence, the appropriate evaluation method for the orientation information of fillers is essential to ensure the accuracy of the special micro-structure in the manufacturing process of the filler-reinforced composites. However, there is still a need of effective and high-accuracy method to extract the orientation information of fillers in composites. To tackle this issue, the path traversal (PT) method based on the microscale image process was developed to evaluate the orientation information of fillers quantitively. In the PT method, the pixel image is obtained by the process of edge extraction, smoothing and binarization. Then, the orientation information of fillers is analyzed and obtained by the traversal of eight paths, which reveals the relationship of the pixel information and the orientation information. In this study, the composites with different fillers distributions were generated to verify the accuracy of the PT method by comparing the theoretical values and calculated values of different distributions. The PT method showed accurate evaluation in orientation information and explained the difference in heat conduction enhancement caused by different fillers distribution by analyzing the orientation information of fillers in composites. The PT method shows promising applications in evaluating the orientation information of fillers in composites and predicting the thermal conductivity of composite.