Abstract
The effect of coating shape on effective conductivities of aligned long elliptic cylinder reinforced composites is investigated for two types of coatings: uniform and confocal. The aligned elliptic cylinders are either randomly distributed or periodically arranged in space. It is found that uniform coating, under most circumstances, is more effective in enhancing or impairing the inclusion, while confocal coating performs better for enhancing parallel and impairing perpendicular components at thin coatings, and for impairing parallel and enhancing perpendicular components at thick coatings. The advantage of uniform coating over confocal coating becomes more pronounced with increasing inclusion aspect ratio. The regularity of array structure restricts the allowable coating ratio and gives rise to interesting behavior of the coating effect.