Motivation: (1) NARloy-Z (Cu-3%Ag-0.5%Zr) is the state of the art, high thermal conductivity structural alloy used for making liquid rocket engine main combustion chamber liner. It has a Thermal conductivity approx 80% of pure copper. (2) Improving the thermal conductivity of NARloy-Z will help to improve the heat transfer efficiency of combustion chamber. (3)Will also help to reduce the propulsion system mass and increase performance. It will also increases thrust to weight ratio. (4) Improving heat transfer helps to design and build better thermal management systems for nuclear propulsion and other applications. Can Carbon nanotubes (CNT) help to improve the thermal conductivity (TC)of NARloy-Z? (1)CNT's have TC of approx 20X that of copper (2) 5vol% CNT could potentially double the TC of NARloy-Z if properly aligned (3) Improvement will be less if CNT s are randomly distributed, provided there is a good thermal bond between CNT and matrix. Prior research has shown poor results (1) No TC improvement in the copper-CNT composite reported (2)Reported values are typically lower (3) Attributed to high contact thermal resistance between CNT and Cu matrix (4)Results suggest that a bonding material between CNT and copper matrix is required to lower the contact thermal resistance It is hypothesized that Zr in NARloy-Z could act as a bonding agent to lower the contact thermal resistance between CNT and matrix
