Thermal conductivity of high density polyethylene filled with graphite

The effect of the grade, the content, and the particle diameter on the thermal conductivity of high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) filled with graphite were studied. The results show an increase of thermal conductivity of the HDPE/graphite composite with increase of graphite content. The thermal conductivity of the HDPE filled with the expanded graphite was larger than that of the HDPE filled with the colloid graphite system. At the same volume content (7%), the thermal conductivity of the former was twice that of the latter one. The particle diameter of the graphite also affected the thermal conductivity of HDPE composites. With increase of the particle diameter of the colloid graphite, the thermal conductivity of the HDPE/graphite increased. However, when the particle diameter of colloid graphite was larger than 15 μm, the increase of thermal conductivity of HDPE/graphite changed by inches. Some models proposed to predict thermal conductivity of a composite in a two‐phase system could not be applied to HDPE filled graphite powder composites, such as Maxwell‐Eucken, Cheng and Vachon, Zieblend, Lewis and Nielsen, Agari and Uno equations. But, according to the increase of thermal conductivity of HDPE composites filled with the colloid graphite, we find that Ziebland equation is suitable except of some constant. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 3806–3810, 2006