556 Estimation of thermal conductance at the metallic contact in vacuum
Details
Space apparatus subject heavy thermal loads in operating conditions in space. So, to design these space apparatus with sufficient reliability, the accurate thermal analysis of these apparatus in vacuum condition is indispensable. In this paper we have derived a new method for estimating thermal conductance at the contact interface between metal surfaces. The method takes into account surface roughness and thermal conductance of surface materials such as oxidized layers. And it uses Hertz's formula to estimate the real contact area. The estimated thermal contact conductance is confirmed to agree with the experimentally measured conductance by using bar-type specimens. It is shown that the new method can estimate the thermal conductance at the contact interface between different metals more accurately than traditional methods such as [1,2].
