Composite Structures 108 (2014) 987991

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Composite Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

Anisotropic thermal conductivity of unidirectional natural abaca ber

composites as a function of lumen and cell wall structure
Ke Liu a,, Zhimao Yang b, Hitoshi Takagi c
a

College of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan 430073, Hubei, Peoples Republic of China
School of Science, MOE Key Laboratory for Non-Equilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, ShaanXi, Peoples Republic
of China
c
Institute of Technology and Science, The University of Tokushima, 2-1 Minamijosanjima-cho, Tokushima 770-8506, Japan
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 30 October 2013
Keywords:
Natural materials
Composites
Fibres and laments
Thermal
Microstructure

a b s t r a c t
The thermal conductivity of unidirectional abaca berepoxy composites was measured by ash method,
which is one of transient state ways based on laser, and studied in model. The results showed that the
composites presented increasing longitudinal thermal conductivity but decreasing transverse one as
increasing ber content. The anisotropic thermal conduction properties of the unidirectional composites
mainly depend on the lumen and cell wall structure of aligned abaca ber. The dependency between
them can be regulated by selecting suitable volume ratio of lumen to ber (v) and thermal conductivity
ratio of ber cell wall to matrix (Kfc\/Km in transverse direction and Kfck/Km in longitudinal direction). It
was concluded that the natural bers or probably other hollow bers can be utilized to design unidirectional natural ber composites with anisotropic thermal conduction properties.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Nowadays, plant bers have been widely applied as an effective
reinforcement in polymer composites due to their biodegradability, light weight, low cost and high specic properties [13]. For
most of plant bers, the lumen structure lled with air makes
the natural bers as good candidates for acoustic absorbents and
thermal insulators [35]. Therefore, many researchers have studied
the thermal conductivity of plant ber composites in terms of ber
arrangement [6] and surface treatment [7,8]. In our previous
works, it was demonstrated that the lumen structure is one of
the most important factors in the transverse thermal conductivity
of unidirectional abaca ber composites rather than crystalline
structure and chemical compounds [9]. Moreover, the lumen size
presents a critical value, which is signicant for analyzing and
designing the composite with a desired thermal conduction property [10].
In the unidirectional plant ber composite, the route of heat
ow is more concise in the direction of ber than that across the
ber due to the quasi-uniform microstructure along ber. Moreover, there are thousands of cellulose crystalline (microbrils)
directionally arranged along plant ber bundles [11,12] resulting
in much higher longitudinal thermal conductivity than transverse
one [6]. As for thermal insulators, lumens in plant ber contribute
Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 2759367691.
E-mail address: luecole@gmail.com (K. Liu).
0263-8223/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2013.10.036

to decrease the ability of heat transferring in composites. However,

to date, the role of the lumen and cell wall structure played in the
thermal conduction property of unidirectional natural ber composite has not been studied comprehensively to our best knowledge. Furthermore, it has more chance to design natural berreinforced composites with remarkable anisotropic thermal conduction properties through considering lumen and cell wall structure in the two perpendicular directions. Therefore, this paper is
aimed to study the anisotropic thermal conduction properties of
unidirectional composites through analyzing longitudinal and
transverse thermal conductivity of unidirectional abaca ber epoxy
composites in experiment and model with considering some referenced data.
2. Methods
2.1. Materials
Abaca bers, exported from Philippines by Toho Tokushu Pulp
Co. Ltd., Japan, were extracted from the leaf sheaths of abaca plants
by a decortication method [13] mechanically, which can recover
the whole bers. Long abaca bers with average diameter
185 lm were rubbed to remove the cuticle attached on the surface
of ber bundle and then straighten around a thin aluminium sheet
unidirectionally under running water. Finally, bers were dried at
50 C for 10 h and cut into 11 cm long.

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K. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 108 (2014) 987991

Nomenclature
Kk
K\
Kfk
Kf\
Kfck
Kfc\
Km
Kl

longitudinal thermal conductivity of unidirectional ber

composite
transverse thermal conductivity of unidirectional ber
composite
longitudinal thermal conductivity of ber
transverse thermal conductivity of ber
longitudinal thermal conductivity of ber cell wall
transverse thermal conductivity of ber cell wall
thermal conductivity of matrix
thermal conductivity of lumen

The epoxy resin purchased from Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Japan, (JER819, viscosity: 0.4 Pa s at 25 C), was defoamed
and mixed with 7.0 wt.% Diethylenetriamine (DETA) in a planetary
mixer (KK-250S, Kurabo, Co. Ltd., Japan).

bk
b\
v

v0k
v0\
Vf

thermal conductivity ratio of ber cell wall to matrix in

longitudinal direction
thermal conductivity ratio of ber cell wall to matrix in
transverse direction
volume ratio of lumen to ber
critical volume ratio of lumen to ber in longitudinal
direction
critical volume ratio of lumen to ber in transverse
direction
volume fraction of ber in composite

where Cpf and Cpe are the specic heat capacities of abaca ber and
epoxy, respectively, measured in a Netzsch Simultaneous Thermal
Analyzer STA 449C Jupiter with sapphire as a heat capacity reference. Vf is the volume fraction of abaca ber (calculated by the
method in reference [9]).

2.2. Unidirectional composite specimens

2.4. Modeling of the thermal conductivity of composites
The specimens the longitudinal (Fig. 1(b)) and transverse
(Fig. 1(c)) thermal conductivity measurements were cut from a
large size composites plate (Fig. 1(a)) fabricated using a resin
transfer molding method [9]. The nal specimen size after griding
and polishing was 10  10  1 mm.

Different to the more complex model of the transverse thermal

conductivity [9], the longitudinal thermal conductivity of unidirectional composites can be analyzed just by using the rule of mixture
as shown in Eq. (3):

K k K f k V f K m 1  V f

2.3. Measurement of the thermal conductivity of composites

K l v K fck 1  v V f K m 1  V f

The thermal conductivities of specimens were measured using a

ash diffusivity technique. A coating of graphite was then applied
to the specimens before testing. The test was performed at 25 C
using a xenon light ash diffusivity system (LFA 447 Nanoash,
Netzsch Instruments, Inc, Germany) according to the ASTM standard E-1461 [14]. After the thermal diffusivity was obtained from
the transient thermal pulse using Cowen analysis, the thermal conductivities (K) of specimen were calculated using Eq. (1) as follow:

where Vf the volume fraction of ber bundle, v the volume ratio of

lumen to ber bundle. Kfk, Kfck, Km and Kl the longitudinal thermal
conductivity of ber bundle, ber cell wall, matrix and air in lumen,
respectively.
3. Results

Fig. 2 shows the transverse thermal conductivity of composites

decreases as the volume fraction of abaca ber increases and presents good agreement with the results obtained from a steady static comparative method [9], indicating the validity of this method.
From this gure, the transverse thermal conductivity of abaca ber
bundle Kf\ of 0.185 W/(mK) is obtained from extrapolation [6], the
transverse thermal conductivity of abaca ber cell wall Kfc\ is estimated to be 0.43 W/(mK) through HasselmanJohnsons model
[15]. Additionally, the volume ratio v of abaca ber has been re-

Fig. 1. (a) Large size composite fabricated in previous work [9], specimen for the of
(b) longitudinal and (c) transverse thermal conductivity measurements.

Fig. 2. Transverse thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of specimen varying

with ber content using ash method (FM) compared with the results by steady
static comparative method (SM).

K a  q  Cp

where a is the measured diffusivity, q is the density and Cp is the

specic heat capacity of composites. The densities of the epoxy
and composites were measured using an Archimedes method. The
specic heat capacity were obtained using the rule of mixture as
shown in Eq. (2) [6]:

C p V f C pf 1  V f C pe

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K. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 108 (2014) 987991

Fig. 3. Longitudinal thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of specimens with

different ber content.

ported to be 0.45 [9]. Consequently, due to the large lumen content

and low transverse thermal conductivity of cell wall, the transverse
thermal conductivity of composite decreases with increasing abaca
ber content.

Fig. 6. Relationships between

data are also presented.

v 0?

and b\,

v0k and

bk. Four kinds of experimental

However, the relationship between the longitudinal thermal

conductivity of composites and the volume fraction of abaca ber
(shown in Fig. 3) is other than that of transverse one but the
decreasing trend. In Fig. 3, one can see that the longitudinal one

Fig. 4. Typical route of heat ow in (a) transverse and (b) longitudinal direction of unidirectional plant ber composites.

Fig. 5. Dimensionless longitudinal thermal conductivity varying with ber content versus

v when (a) bk = 0.5, (b) bk = 2, (c) bk = 10 and (d) bk = 100.

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K. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 108 (2014) 987991

Table 1
Parameters of (quasi-) unidirectional ber reinforced resin composite.
Fiber

Matrix

Kfc\ (W/(mK))

Kfck (W/(mK))

Km (W/(mK))

b\

bk

Abaca [9]
Banana [16]
Bamboo [17]
Carbon [18]
Carbon [19]

Epoxy
Polypropylene (PP)
Poly lactic acid (PLA)
Copper
Phenolic

0.43
0.11660.564a,b
0.35a
0.8
10.416.7

1.8
>1c
>1c
8
10.416.7

0.298
0.240
0.200
300
0.25

0.45
0.819
0.014
0
0

1.44
0.492.37
1.7
0.003
41.666.8

6.04
>4.2
>5
0.027
41.666.8

Calculated from K f ? through HasselmanJohnsons model [12].

Actual lumen size of banana ber in composites is apt to be smaller than that in intact banana ber since the thickness of banana ber cell wall is much thinner rather
than other plant bers like abaca and bamboo ber. It results in K fc? smaller than 0.564 W/(mK).
c
Supposed, referenced to the longitudinal thermal conductivity of abaca ber.
b

Kk is higher than the transverse thermal conductivity and the multiple between them increase with the increasing abaca ber content. This phenomenon can be explained as follow: From Fig. 3
and Eq. (3), Kfk and Kfck have been estimated about 1.0 W/(mK)
and 1.8 W/(mK), respectively, through the similar method as the
transverse case. It is evident that the longitudinal thermal
conductivity of abaca ber cell wall is about 4.2 times higher than
transverse one. For abaca ber bundle, this value reaches to 5.4.
These results indicate that differences in the thermal conduction
properties are derived from the anisotropic microstructure of abaca bers, especially the unidirectional arrangement of cellulose
microbril. On the other hand, the lumen in abaca ber bundle
shows distinct shape and distribution: circular-like shape in the
transverse but strip-like shape in longitudinal direction as shown
in Fig. 4. The effect of ber cell wall and lumen structure on the
anisotropic thermal conductivity is discussed quantitively in the
next section.
Another question such as Does the longitudinal thermal conductivity of unidirectional composites have the ability to decrease
with increasing ber content? is also discussed in the next
section.
4. Discussion
From Eq. (3), the variations of dimensionless longitudinal thermal conductivity (Kk/Km) with v for different value of bk = Kfck/Km
are shown in Fig. 5. When bk = 0.5, Kk decreases with increasing
Vf for any v. Nevertheless, when bk = 2, 10 and 100, Kk decreases
with increasing Vf for v > 0.524, v > 0.91 and v > 0.99, respectively.
Furthermore, when bk > 1, there is a critical value v0k existing for v
in the longitudinal direction, and v0k is depend on bk. It has also
been reported that the transverse thermal conductivity K\ has
the corresponding critical lumen ratio v0\ (a2 in Ref. [10]), which
relies on the thermal conduction parameter b\ = Kfc\/Km [10],
resembling present longitudinal case. Clearly, bk and b\ denote
the cell wall structure, while v stands for the lumen structure. As
a result, the trends of the longitudinal and transverse thermal conductivity of composite varied with the content of ber both can be
regulated through adjusting these two structures. In all the discussion, the thermal conductivity Kl of air in lumen is 0.026 W/(mK).
For a further analysis, the relationships between v0k and bk, v0\
and b\ are displayed in Fig. 6. This gure shows that v0k and v0\
increase with increasing bk and b\, respectively. When bk,
b\ < 10, v0k and v0\ increasing greatly, but when bk, b\ > 10, v0k
shows an asymptotic behavior to 1, v0\ approaches to 0.468. Precisely because of the difference, the gure was divided into three
regions: Regions I, II and III. In these regions, unidirectional composites present diverse anistropic thermal conduction properties
and a new insight was acquired.
Firstly, if the ber and matrix with the parameters v, b\ fall in
Region I or II, and v, bk in Region II or III, bers reduce the transverse but enhance the longitudinal thermal conductivity of composites. The composites can be used as a thermal insulator in the

transverse direction and a thermal conductor in the longitudinal

direction. Present composite of abaca ber and epoxy belongs to
this case (see blue mark in Fig. 6) and the corresponding experimental data are listed in Table 1.
Secondly, if v, b\ fall in Region I or II, and v, bk in Region I, bers
reduce the transverse and longitudinal thermal conductivity of
composites. The composites can be used as a thermal insulator in
the transverse direction. In this case, the lumen size usually is very
large, e.g. the lumen volume ratio is about 0.82 [16] (see Table 1)
for banana ber. Therefore, composited with polypropylene, banana bers lower the thermal conductivity of composite in two directions (red1 marks in Fig. 6).
Finally, if v, b\ fall in Region III, and v, bk in Region II or III, bers
enhance the longitudinal and transverse thermal conductivity of
composites. The composites can be used as a thermal conductor
in both-two directions. In Fig. 6, one can see that the parameters
of bamboo-PLA composite belong to this region because of the tiny
lumen and higher thermal conductivity than that of PLA [17] (see
Table 1).
It is well known that the transverse thermal conductivity of ber is lower than the longitudinal one on account of the directionality of crystalline along ber. Therefore, the previous discussions
embodied all types of natural plant ber composites.
Additionally, our model is also appropriate for the limiting case:
v = 0. In this case, the ber is solid similar the case of carbon ber.
In Fig. 6, the orange mark and black mark indicate carbon ber
copper composite and carbon berphenolic composite, respectively. The former presents decreasing thermal conductivities with
ber content increasing in both the transverse and longitudinal
orientations because bk and b\ are much smaller than 1[18]. However, the latter display increasing trend since bk and b\ are much
larger than 1 [19]. Certainly, if the carbon ber is designed with
hollow structure, these two composites will display lower thermal
conductivity in the two directions, and the corresponding marks in
Fig. 6 will move up a value of given v.
In summary, present results are suitable for both hollow and solid bers, especially natural plant ber. The results indicated in
Fig. 6 are not only the explanation of present experimental data
but also the guidance of designing unidirectional ber composites
with anisotropic thermal conduction properties. The two arrows in
Fig. 6 provide the main direction of designing for insulating composite and conducting composite, respectively. And one can also
adjust the thermal conductivity of composites through assembling
different unidirectional composite laminas.
5. Conclusions
The anisotropic thermal conduction property of unidirectional
abaca ber reinforced epoxy composites were studied experimentally, the effect of lumen and cell wall structure on the thermal
1
For interpretation of color in Fig. 6, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.

K. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 108 (2014) 987991

conductivities was analyzed in model with referenced data as comparison. The results showed that the thermal conductivity of composites presented increasing in the longitudinal direction and
decreasing in the transverse thermal conductivity as the ber content increased. It was concluded that the volume ratio of lumen to
ber (v) indicating the lumen structure and thermal conduction
parameter (b\ = Kfc\/Km and bk = Kfck/Km) symbolizing the cell wall
structure of ber were the two important factors affecting the thermal conductivity of unidirectional composite, which can be regulated by way of selecting the two factors with suitable values in
both transverse and longitudinal directions. These results are signicant for designing the ber-reinforced composites with anisotropic thermal conduction property.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Toho Tokushu Pulp Co., Ltd., Japan for supplying abaca bers. This work was partially supported by the presidential research grant of The University of Tokushima and DoubleDegree Exchanged Program between The University of Tokushima
(Japan) and Xian Jiaotong University (China).
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