variavel0=<b>MANUEL E. CRUZ</b> - manuel@serv.com.ufrj.br UFRJ
<b>Carlos F. Matt</b> - cfmatt@lttc.coppe.ufrj.br UFRJ
<b>Abstract.</b> Composties are among the most important and frequently used materials. The determination of macroscopic thermal properties of composites is of great engineering interest. It is frequent in the literature to calculate the effective conductivity of composites assuming that the individual constituents have a perfect thermal contact. In reality, that is not the case, and one has to account for the interfacial thermal resistance which is almost inevitably present between the constituents. In this paper, we develop a new three-dimensional isoparametric finite-element discretization scheme to treat the interfacional thermal resistance in composite materials. We demonstrate the validity and flexibility of our scheme by effecting a truly three-dimensional sample calculation of the effective conductivity of an ordened-array composite, for which analytical results are known. The scheme presented here has the distinct advantage of being applicable to complex and realistic microstructures.
<b>Keywords.</b> Heat Conduction, composite materials, finite elements, interfacial thermal resistance.