Benha University

Mohamed Ibrahim Zaki Amer

Asst. Lecturer

Faculty of Engineering, Benha Electrical Engineering

Data-driven modelling of thermal conductivity in electrically aligned PDMS–diamond composites with experimental verification

Applied Thermal Engineering • 2025
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Publication Information
Authors Mohamed I. Zaki, Masafumi Inaba, Michihiko Nakano, Ragab A. El Sehiemy, Junya Suehiro
Keywords Thermal conductivity PDMS-diamond polymer composite Electrical alignment Decision tree regression Predictive modelling-based machine learning
Journal Applied Thermal Engineering
Publisher ElSEVIER
Volume 280
Issue Not Available
Pages 1-14
publication.type International
Paper Link Open Link
Supplementary Materials Not Available
Abstract
Polymer-based composite material optimization is a key technology for achieving the desired thermal man
agement in heat conduction sheets used in electronics and aerospace. Diamond particles are widely used as
thermally conductive fillers in a liquid of poly di-methyl siloxane (PDMS) matrix because of their unique ther
mophysical properties. Electrical alignment is a powerful approach for filler alignment to achieve higher thermal
conductivity. Meanwhile, practical experiments require substantial time, resources and consumable energy due
to extensive testing. Therefore, it is essential to develop a highly robust predictive model for estimating thermal
conductivity. This paper proposes a data-driven-based model that investigates a novel decision tree (DT)
regression model for predicting thermal conductivity based on electrical alignment parameters, aiming to
identify the optimal experimental conditions that achieve higher thermal conductivity. In this study, electrical
alignment parameters, namely voltage, frequency, and rotational speed, are selected as descriptors for modelling
and computing thermal conductivity. Correlation and multicollinearity analyses are conducted to evaluate the
relationships among these descriptors. Three machine learning approaches, including Decision Tree, Random
Forest (RF), and Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT), are investigated alongside six empirical regression
models. The predictive model-based refined DT achieves high accuracy with the lowest mean square error of
0.0004 and a higher coefficient of determination (R-squared) of 0. 9751on testing data, respectively. This in
dicates that the model is capable of accurately predicting the thermal conductivity of hybrid nanofluids over a
wide range of hybrid nanoparticle combinations with high closeness to the experimental records. This predictive
model condition highlights the potential of DT-based method to precisely compute the thermal conductivity of
PDMS-diamond composite based on the applied electrical alignment parameters.
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