Experimental Investigation of Contact Heat Transfer at High Temperature Based on Steady-State Heat Flux Method

Abstract

Based on the steady-state heat flux method, the effects of interfacial temperature (320°C–550°C) and contact pressure (2.96–15.68 MPa) on the contact heat transfer were investigated by a new experimental apparatus and method. To accurately measure the interfacial temperature drop, six thin specimens, alternately overlapped together between two test specimens, were applied. The experimental results show that thermal contact conductance increases with the increase of interfacial temperature and contact pressure generally. In addition, the variation of thermal contact conductance for different contact pressure is more obvious at higher temperature. The basic tendency of the power law correlation between thermal contact conductance and contact pressure agrees well with that of available theoretical models.

Keywords:

• thermal contact conductance
• steady-state heat flux method
• high temperature
• experimental investigation