• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.910-932
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• 1996

A problem of determining the effective conductivity of a useful model of sphere-matrix type, disordered three-phase composite media is considered. Specifically, a three-phase media in which two-phase composite spheres, consisting of spheres of conductivity $k_2$((phase 2) and concentric shells of conductivity $k_3$(phase 3), are randomly distributed in a matrix of conductivity $k_1$( (phase 1) is considered. As for the structure models configuring three-phase composite media, three different structure models of PCS, PS-1 and PS-2 models are defined, which are analogous to well-established PCS, PS structure models of two-phase composite media. Futhermore, a generalized PS-PCS structure model is proposed to incorporate thesee three different models in one. Effective condectivity $k^{\ast}$of multiphaes composite media is greatly influenced by the phase connectivity of each disspersed phase material, as well as phase conductivities and phase volume fractions. Phase connectivity of three-phase PCS, PS-1, PS-2 composite media is quantified by the impentrability parameter $\lambda$. Mathematically rigorous first-order cluster bounds on $k^{\ast}$ are derived for these models of three-phase composite media, and as computation examples, first-order cluster bounds on $k^{\ast}$ for three-phase composites consisting of largely different phase conductivities are computed and compared as function of concnectivity parpmeter $\lambda$. Results and discussions are given.