Numerical simulation of high-temperature thermal contact resistance and its reduction mechanism

Donghuan Liu; Jing Zhang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0194483

Numerical simulation of high-temperature thermal contact resistance and its reduction mechanism

PLoS One. 2018 Mar 16;13(3):e0194483. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194483. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Donghuan Liu¹, Jing Zhang²

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory for Magneto-Photoelectrical Composite and Interface Science, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, P.R. China.
² Basic Experimental Center for Natural Science, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, P.R. China.

Abstract

High-temperature thermal contact resistance (TCR) plays an important role in heat-pipe-cooled thermal protection structures due to the existence of contact interface between the embedded heat pipe and the heat resistive structure, and the reduction mechanism of thermal contact resistance is of special interests in the design of such structures. The present paper proposed a finite element model of the high-temperature thermal contact resistance based on the multi-point contact model with the consideration of temperature-dependent material properties, heat radiation through the cavities at the interface and the effect of thermal interface material (TIM), and the geometry parameters of the finite element model are determined by simple surface roughness test and experimental data fitting. The experimental results of high-temperature thermal contact resistance between superalloy GH600 and C/C composite material are employed to validate the present finite element model. The effect of the crucial parameters on the thermal contact resistance with and without TIM are also investigated with the proposed finite element model.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Algorithms*
Computer Simulation*
Finite Element Analysis
Hot Temperature*
Materials Testing / methods
Surface Properties
Thermal Conductivity*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 11772045) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. FRF-GF-17-B33). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.