Experimental study on the hysteresis effect of thermal contact conductance at light loads

Abstract

This work presents the preliminary results of an experimental study on the thermal contact conductance hysteresis effect. The study is focused on relatively low contact pressures. Thermal contact conductance data obtained from three different SS304 pairs are presented and compared against theoretical models available in the literature. One pair is ground/lapped and the other two are bead blasted/lapped with different roughness levels. The results show that the measured values of thermal contact conductance during unloading are up to 130% larger than during loading. The appearance of hysteresis loops for all pairs tested indicates that the deformation is plastic during the first loading. The thermal contact conductance models predict the first loading fairly well, especially for high contact pressures. At light contact pressures, the measured values of thermal contact conductance lie well above