AN INVESTIGATION ON PREDICTING THERMAL CONTACT CONDUCTANCE BETWEEN FLAT AND LINE CONTACT MODELS

Abstract

Thermal contact conductance (TCC) is widely used in many application like electronic components, spacecraft and I.0 engines etc. Now a days due to miniaturization of electronic components leads to high power density which reduces the life and reliability of the system. Hence accurate prediction leads to better safety and a efficient product. TCC of any two contacting surfaces is a complex phenomenon because it cannot be measured directly nor it can be predicated exactly by any correlation because contacting area between two solid and interstitial gaps is usually not known. Experimentally there can be two ways for measuring TCC steady state and transient. In the present report steady state method has been used. From the literature survey we came to know that most of the studies for TCC has been done on flat surfaces however very few paper are available on cylindrical contact. In the present report experiment has been performed on five sets of specimen with different geometry like flat surface, cylinder- flat and cylindrical contact. One set of experiment is done on Zirconium alloy (PT tube) which is used in Advance thermal reactor. Experiment of Zirconium alloy was quite tough because of small thickness of PT tube (of the order of 3.5 mm). Experimental studies have been compared with the previously available models. A good trend has been obtained over a limited range of parameters