Thermal Transport in Disordered Network Metamaterial

Abstract

Disordered materials occur naturally and offer a broader design space than ordered or crystalline structures. We investigate transient thermal transport in two-dimensional network metamaterials constructed from Delaunay triangulations of underlying point patterns, with varying degree of disorder. Experimentally, we use infrared thermography to measure the spatiotemporal evolution of temperature in additively manufactured 17-4 PH stainless-steel networks. Numerically, we solve the heat equation on corresponding metric graphs and incorporate boundary heating and environmental heat loss to connect network geometry with the observed transient response. By combining experiments and simulations, we aim to identify how disorder affect heat transport and characterize crucial factors that predict behavior of thermal conduction in network materials.