Thermal Conductivity of Agglomerate Cork

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Thermal Conductivity of Agglomerate Cork

T. Santos, J.S. Amaral, V.A.F. Costa, V.S. Amaral

For fine grains, agglomerate cork presents essentially isotropic properties, which depend mainly on the grain size, resin type, resin percentage and compacting pressure. Cork is a well-known material due to its very interesting mechanical properties and low thermal conductivity. Mechanical properties of agglomerate cork strongly depend on the referred parameters, and additional work needs to be conducted to evaluate how they affect its thermal properties. Experimental work to measure the thermal conductivity and specific heat of agglomerate cork is described, and the obtained results analysed. Samples, in the form of cubes of agglomerate cork, are experimentally tested to evaluate the agglomerate cork thermal conductivity and specific heat. Different cork grain sizes, resin types, resin percentages, and compacting pressures are considered. Thermal conductivity and specific heat are measured using the Hotdisk© technique. Experimental results of the thermal conductivity and specific heat of the agglomerate cork are complemented by evaluating the influence of agglomerate grain size, nature of the used resin, percentage of resin used, and the compacting pressure imposed during the resin curing and consolidation process. It is concluded that the agglomerate cork thermal properties are only slightly affected by the referred parameters, the agglomerate cork density, related with the compacting pressure, having the highest influence over those thermal properties.

Keywords
Agglomerate Cork, Thermal Conductivity, Resin, Compacting Pressure

Published online 9/22/2017, 10 pages
Copyright © 2017 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: T. Santos, J.S. Amaral, V.A.F. Costa, V.S. Amaral, ‘Thermal Conductivity of Agglomerate Cork’, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 3, pp 1-10, 2017

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21741/9781945291418-1

The article was published as article 1 of the book Cork Science and its Applications

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