FEA-Based Numerical Simulation and Theoretical Modeling for Predicting Thermal Contact Conductance

Abstract

The chapter states the problem of thermal contact conductance between surfaces. Rough surface generation and thermal contact conductance has been simulated using Finite Element Method (FEM) based Ansys. The resulting geometry is meshed by different meshing method to convert the solid model into FEM model. The main aim of meshing is to create fine and coarse mesh at the contact to reduce the computational time. To create a fine mesh at contact free meshing with refinement and mapped mesh has been used. The analysis has been performed on the FEM model with varying loading condition of different surface roughness and different materials to get the real contact area and thus thermal contact conductance. The variation of thermal contact conductance and real contact area with pressure of different surface roughness and with surface roughness of different loading condition of the specimen made of aluminum and mild steel has been plotted and compared.