Thermal Analysis of Carbon Fiber Composite Structure by Finite Element Analysis

Carbon fibers are now becoming a technologically and commercially important material in various fields such as aerospace, military, turbine blades, construction, medical, automotive, sporting goods industries and even for the application in the electronics industry. In this project, the effect of the fiber orientations on the thermal behavior of the carbon fiber composite by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been studied. With the analysis, the thermal behavior of the composite like temperature distribution and thermal gradient have been evaluated.The model and the thermal analysis of carbon fiber composite are developed by using ANSYS Mechanical APDL. Thermal conductivity, convective heat transfer and heat source are the important element in thermal analysis. The temperature distributions show that the thermal conductivity in the perpendicular direction is lower than that in parallel direction