• composite materials
• experimental determination of thermal conductivity
• infrared camera
• inverse method
• satellite thermal management
• thermal behaviour of carbon fiber composites
• thermal conductivity

Thermal management is critical to the performance, lifetime, and reliability of electronic devices. With the miniaturization, integration and functionalization of electronics and the emergence of new applications such as light emitting diodes, thermal dissipation becomes a challenging problem. Addressing this challenge requires the development of composite materials with enhanced thermal conductivity. In this work a method for identifying thermal conductivity of composite materials is proposed. The approach taken has been divided mainly into 3 parts:
The realization of a robust, reliable and reproducible experiment able to measure the in-plane thermal conductivity of a composite specimen with the help of an infrared camera. The realization of elementary thermal simulations on single-material test pieces in order to compare these results with those obtained experimentally. A numerical part aimed at matching the numerical data with the experimental ones after which, the numerical simulation will be able to yield, by inverse method, the thermal properties of the test pieces.
Critical issues faced and results will be detailed highlighted in order to continue and improve the work.
The present work has been carried out in collaboration with the Grande Ecole of engineering The Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace ISAE-SUPAERO based in Toulouse (FRANCE) and the Company MECANO ID based in Toulouse as well.