An experimental study on thermal contact conductance across the SS316L/CuCrZr interface

Abstract

A vacuum apparatus to measure thermal contact conductance (TCC) was introduced. A TCC test method and procedure was presented. By monitoring the temperature distribution on the test specimen, the heat flux and temperature drop of the contact interface were calculated, and then the TCC was obtained. The experimental research was conducted with pressed pairs SS316L/CuCrZr contacts in a range of 100∼300°C and 1∼10MP. The experimental data analysis results show that the TCC increases with the increase of contact temperature and the TCC also grows with the growth of contact pressure. The TCC appears as a linear relationship with the change trend of pressure at a given temperature. By uncertainty analysis, the measurement error of TCC decreases with the increase of contact pressure at a given temperature. And the variation rate of measurement error increases with the rise in contact temperature.