Multiscale simulation of thermal contact resistance based on the Gaussian surfaces

A multiscale model combining the microscopic lattice Boltzmann (LB) method and the traditional finite difference (FD) was developed to predict the thermal contact resistance (TCR) between two solids' surfaces. The influences of surface roughness, pressure, materials' hardness and thermal conductivity, etc on TCR were calculated and analyzed. The results indicate that, with the same roughness surface, the materials' thermal conductivity will play the leading role on TCR when the pressure is low, but when the pressure get increased, the pressure and materials' microhardness will have a great influence on TCR, yet the effect of thermal conductivity will decrease. The comparisons between simulated results with experimental results show that the TCR calculated by multiscale model coincides well with experimental data.