ISSN Online: 2377-424X
ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-474-8
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-473-1
International Heat Transfer Conference 16
MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF EFFECTIVE THERMAL CONTACT RESISTANCE AT VARIABLE CLAMPING PRESSURES
Аннотация
Thermal contact resistance (TCR) always is a major obstacle for the heat transfer at the interface between two
contact components, which has aroused great interest to study the mechanism of it. The application of the thermal
interface material (TIM) has been an essential means to reduce the TCR and the performance of various TIMs is
necessary to characterize for engineering practice. This paper presents the TCR measurement under the situation
of the bare contact and filled with TIMs using the steady state heat flow method. We measured the effective TCR
of eight kinds of commercially available TIMs including two kinds of thermal greases, three kinds of thermal pad,
liquid metal, thin indium at different clamping pressures ranging from 0.1 to 2 MPa. In general, the results show
that the effective TCR has a very strong dependence on clamping pressure and bond line thickness as described in
previous studies. In the same clamping pressure, we found that the TCR of inserting TIM (e.g. thermal pad) may
contribute little to enhancing the interface heat transfer. Compared with other TIMs, liquid metal demonstrates a
better performance whose effective TCR lower than 20 mm2 K/W and obtained the minimum measured value of
7.8 mm2 K/W at the condition of 0.5 MPa and 357.15K. In addition, a lower pressure sensitivity for the TCR is
found in the use of the liquid metal.