A review of thermal contact conductance research of conforming contact surfaces

Thermal contact conductance (TCC) is such a common parameter that is simple to understand but difficult to determine in heat transfer process. TCC can bring a large uncertainty in the thermal analysis of the whole system in many engineering applications, such as the cooling of heat pipe reactors, heat dissipation of the chip and finned-tube heat exchangers; besides, it can also reduce the heat transfer efficiency, thus obtaining accurate TCC and controlling it can be meaningful for high-efficiency thermal management. Although enough attention was paid to TCC in the last few decades, however, there is still a gap needed to fill in TCC research. In this article, a comprehensive review on TCC of macroscale and conforming contact is summarized and commented. The review contains the trend and main progress of TCC, including theoretical analysis, experimental measurement and numerical simulation, and the limitations and advantages of these methods are mentioned and commented. As one of common and conforming contact cases, the TCC at the interface of concentric cylinder surface is mentioned and discussed. Besides, the main methods of controlling TCC is also reviewed. Finally, the prospects and challenges of TCC is addressed.