PSI - Issue 80

Stanislav Buklovskyi et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 80 (2026) 146–156 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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Fig. 2: 3D and 2D μCT images of 2.5 wt% CB/UHMWPE composites.

It was observed that the white layers around the UHMWPE granules occupy a larger volume than the total CB volume in the composite, suggesting these regions consist of not CB particles alone but a mixture of UHMWPE with a high concentration of dispersed carbon particles. Table 1 presents information on volume fraction of CB in the overall composite , volume fraction of CB-containing layers and volume fraction of CB in the layers / for materials with different wt % of CB. TABLE 1. Percent volume fractions of CB in the composite and CB-containing layers Samples V CB V L V c/L 0.5 wt% 0.25 0.7 35 1 wt% 0.49 1.8 27 1.5 wt% 0.74 2.5 30 5 wt% 2.51 5.9 43 10 wt% 5.16 11.2 46 In addition to volume fractions studies, the average thickness of the white layers was measured as varying from approximately 0.67 μm at 1 wt% CB to 1.98 μm at 10 wt%, as reported in Miroshnichenko et al. (2023). These layers’ thickness is significantly greater than the typical diameter of individual CB particles, which is around 35 nm (Asbury Carbon, 2024). Given this size difference, the CB-containing layers can be reasonably modeled as two phase composite regions, composed of a UHMWPE matrix embedded with CB inclusions. 2.3. Experimental measurements of thermal conductivity of CB/UHMWPE composite The experimental measurements of thermal conductivity for CB/UHMWPE composites with different wt % of CB were performed as a part of the NSF BioMade project (NSF BioMade Final Report, 2024). Fig. 3 presents the results of the thermal conductivity measurements. The error bars show the standard deviations of measured values.