Calculations of the effective thermal conductivity in a model of syntactic metallic hollow sphere structures using a lattice Monte Carlo method

In this paper, a Lattice Monte Carlo method is used to determine the effective thermal conductivity in two dimensional models of adhesively bonded metallic hollow sphere structures (MHSS). In contrast to earlier approaches, more realistic distributions of spheres without the simplification of cubic symmetric arrangements are considered in this study. For the Monte Carlo analyses, two-dimensional periodic lattices representing different cutting planes through MHSS are generated. Therefore, an algorithm is used which sequentially fills the lattice by adding cut spherical shells and inclusions in the matrix. Another focus of this work is the analysis of the influence of different geometric circle distributions on the effective thermal conductivity. The findings of the random arrangements are also compared to a regular primitive cubic arrangement and with a Maxwell-type approach.