Numerical investigation of thermal contact conductance between linear and curvilinear contacts

Abstract

Abstract-Heat transfer has considerable applications in different industries such as designing of heat exchangers, nuclear reactor cooling, control system for spacecraft and designing of microelectronics cooling. As the surfaces of two metals contact each other, this issue becomes so crucial. Thermal contact resistance (TCR) is one of the key physical parameters in heat transfer of mentioned surfaces. Measuring the experimental value of TCR in laboratory is highly expensive and difficult. As an alternative, numerical modeling methods could be engaged. In this study, inverse problem method solution is utilized as a proper method for estimation of TCR value. To that end, three different configurations (flat-flat, flat-cylinder, cylinder-cylinder) were utilized in two steady and unsteady state conditions to predict the value of TCR. A comparison between the measured and obtained values from the simulation shows that the errors for flat-flat, flat-cylinder and cylinder-cylinder configurations after 10 minutes from starting the experiment are 4.6074%, 0.1662% and 0.5622% , respectively. For steady state condition, the corresponding errors are 6.06e-3%, 1.506% and 0.846%, respectively. In conclusion, the final results establish the fact that the inverse problem method solution can predict TCR values between contacting surfaces.

Advances in thermal contact resistance studies

“…Shojaeefard and Tafazzoli 117 A proposed solution to the inverse problem in predicting the value of TCR It seems to work well with flat-flat and cylinder-cylinder contacts; however, with flat-cylinder contacts, the error% is slightly higher, although not that significant.…”

Thermal Comfort and Energy Analysis in Ceramic Tile

“…In their study, Shojaeefard and Aghvami emphasized the difficulties of determining the contact resistance in laboratory conditions for the contact of two solid surfaces. They focused on numerical modeling to estimate the contact resistance [14].…”