ON THE EFFECTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF A NONLINEAR DISPERION OF SPHERES

Abstract

The effective behaviour of a nonlinear random dispersion of spheres is considered in the context of heat propagation: nonlinearity is understood in the sense that the coefficient of thermal conductivity, being different for the matrix and for the spheres, depends on the temperature gradient at each point. A variational technique is proposed which allows to estimate the effective properties of the dispersion. In the case of a dilute disperion the estimates are explicitly evaluated.