A test-validated prediction model of thermal contact resistance for Ti-6Al-4V alloy

The precise prediction or test of thermal contact resistance is a key issue on increasing or decreasing thermal energy transmission efficiency between two solids. This paper raises a thermal contact resistance prediction model based on measuring actual surface topography under different loading pressures and different heating temperatures. The actual topography of contact surfaces is measured by a 3-D optical microscope named Bruker Contour GT-K. The contact surfaces are reconstructed with language Python according to the data of surface topography from the microscope and the numerical contact model is generated. Then the thermal contact resistance simulation is implemented with software ABAQUS. Based on the elastic-plastic constitutive equations and steady state heat conduction theory, finite element analysis of mechanical and heat transfer performance of the contact model is performed with ABAQUS in the light of sequential coupling method. The studied material pairs are Ti-6Al-4V—Ti-6Al-4V with three kinds of different interstitial material e.g., vacuum, air and conductive silicone grease. The effect of radiation on thermal contact resistance under air and vacuum atmosphere is further studied and analyzed. Besides, the solid thermal conductivity on thermal contact resistance is investigated. To verify the accuracy of the method, the simulated results from ABAQUS are compared with the experimental results of air gap with the same boundary conditions. The maximum deviation between simulation results and experimental results is 9.57% while 75% of the deviations are within 5%. A correlation of thermal contact conductance with the average contact surface temperature and loading pressure is proposed. The results show that this method has high precision to predict thermal contact resistance in the engineering application.