Microstructure simulation and heat transfer optimization for graphene oxide doped anti-/deicing composites

Abstract A microstructure simulation model was established to simulate and optimize the heat transfer performance of graphene oxide (GO) doped Glass Fiber/Epoxy (GF/EP) composites. At the microscopic level, the finite element method was employed to simulate the heat transfer characteristics of the GO/GF/EP composites. At the macroscopic level, infrared thermal imaging measurement was performed to obtain the temperature field distribution of the GO/GF/EP composites. In this work, the maximum error of the heat transfer model of the GO/GF/EP composites was 8.81% by comparing the experimental results with numerical results, which verifying the correctness of the proposed microstructure model of the GO/GF/EP composites. Moreover, the response surface method (RSM) was employed to optimize the heat transfer performance of the GO/GF/EP composites. The main influencing factors were determined by Box-Behnken optimization: graphene content is 1.99 wt%, graphene sheet diameter is 4 μm, layer spacing of glass fiber is 50 μm, glass fiber spacing is 1 μm, and glass fiber diameter is 6 μm. Comparing the experimental results with the predicted values of the proposed model, the error between the results is 1.533%, which shows that the model and the experimental data are in good agreement.