Contact Resistance Measurement and Its Effect on the Thermal Conductivity of Packed Sphere Systems

2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (6) ◽  
pp. 886-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. W. M. Siu ◽  
S. H.-K. Lee

There has been a growing interest in porous systems with a smaller length-scale modeling requirement on the order of each particle, where the existing tools tend to be inadequate. To address this, a Discrete Conduction Model was recently proposed to allow for the transient temperature calculation of 3D random packed-sphere systems for various microstructures. Since many of the motivating applications involve contacting spheres and since there has been a limited number of contact-resistance studies on spheres undergoing elastic deformation, the objective of this study is to obtain measurements of the contact resistances between metallic spheres in elastic contact, as well as to quantify their influence on the effective thermal conductivity. To accomplish this, an experiment was constructed utilizing air and interfacial resistance to replace the functions of the guard heater and vacuum chamber, and in so doing, enabled transient observations. The overall uncertainty was estimated to be ±6%, and the results were benchmarked against available data. A correlation was obtained relating the contact resistance with the contact radius, and results showed the contact resistance to have minimal transient behavior. The results also showed that the neglect of contact resistance could incur an error in the effective thermal conductivity calculation as large as 800%, and a guideline was presented under which the effect of the contact resistance may be ignored. A correlation accounting for the effect of contact resistance on the effective thermal conductivity was also presented.

2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (6) ◽  
pp. 588-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Prasher ◽  
Prajesh Bhattacharya ◽  
Patrick E. Phelan

Here we show through an order-of-magnitude analysis that the enhancement in the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids is due mainly to the localized convection caused by the Brownian movement of the nanoparticles. We also introduce a convective-conductive model which accurately captures the effects of particle size, choice of base liquid, thermal interfacial resistance between the particles and liquid, temperature, etc. This model is a combination of the Maxwell-Garnett (MG) conduction model and the convection caused by the Brownian movement of the nanoparticles, and reduces to the MG model for large particle sizes. The model is in good agreement with data on water, ethylene glycol, and oil-based nanofluids, and shows that the lighter the nanoparticles, the greater the convection effect in the liquid, regardless of the thermal conductivity of the nanoparticles.


Author(s):  
Ayushman Singh ◽  
Srikanth Rangarajan ◽  
Leila Choobineh ◽  
Bahgat Sammakia

Abstract This work presents an approach to optimally designing a composite with thermal conductivity enhancers (TCEs) infiltrated with phase change material (PCM) based on figure of merit (FOM) for thermal management of portable electronic devices. The FOM defines the balance between effective thermal conductivity and energy storage capacity. In present study, TCEs are in the form of a honeycomb structure. TCEs are often used in conjunction with PCM to enhance the conductivity of the composite medium. Under constrained composite volume, the higher volume fraction of TCEs improves the effective thermal conductivity of the composite, while it reduces the amount of latent heat storage simultaneously. The present work arrives at the optimal design of composite for electronic cooling by maximizing the FOM to resolve the stated trade-off. In this study, the total volume of the composite and the interfacial heat transfer area between the PCM and TCE are constrained for all design points. A benchmarked two-dimensional direct CFD model was employed to investigate the thermal performance of the PCM and TCE composite. Furthermore, assuming conduction-dominated heat transfer in the composite, a simplified effective numerical model that solves the single energy equation with the effective properties of the PCM and TCE has been developed. The effective thermal conductivity of the composite is obtained by minimizing the error between the transient temperature gradient of direct and simplified model by iteratively varying the effective thermal conductivity. The FOM is maximized to find the optimal volume fraction for the present design.


2006 ◽  
Vol 306-308 ◽  
pp. 775-780
Author(s):  
Tung Yang Chen

Effective thermal conductivities of composites consisting of curvilinearly anisotropic inclusions with Kapitza thermal contact resistance between the constituents are considered. We show that the effect of these curvilinearly anisotropic inclusions can be exactly simulated by certain equivalent isotropic or transversely isotropic inclusions. Three different micromechanical models are employed to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of the composite. Interestingly, all these methods result in the same simple, closed-form expression.


Author(s):  
Ehsan Sadeghi ◽  
Scott Hsieh ◽  
Majid Bahrami

Accurate information on heat transfer and temperature distribution in metal foams is necessary for design and modeling of thermal-hydraulic systems incorporating metal foams. The analysis of this process requires determination of the effective thermal conductivity as well as the thermal contact resistance (TCR) associated with the interface between the metal foams and adjacent surfaces/layers. In the present study, a test bed that allows the separation of effective thermal conductivity and thermal contact resistance in metal foams is described. Measurements are performed in a vacuum under varying compressive loads using ERG Duocel aluminum foam samples with different porosities and pore densities. Also, a graphical method associated with a computer code is developed to demonstrate the distribution of contact spots and estimate the real contact area at the interface. Our results show that the porosity and the effective thermal conductivity remain unchanged with the variation of compression in the range of 0 to 2 MPa; but TCR decreases significantly with pressure due to an increase in the real contact area at the interface. Moreover, the ratio of real to nominal contact area varies between 0 to 0.013, depending upon the compressive force, porosity, and surface characteristics.


Author(s):  
Peter De Jaeger ◽  
Christophe T’Joen ◽  
Henk Huisseune ◽  
Michel De Paepe

The application of a transient technique for the measurement of effective thermal conductivity and thermal contact resistance of porous media is discussed. A sensitivity analysis has proven that direct measurement of thermal contact resistance from a single temperature recording is not feasible. It requires the measurement of at least one additional sample with different height. The estimation of effective thermal conductivity is done by solving the inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP). The direct problem is treated analytically by describing the system with a quadrupole formalism in Laplace domain. The inversion procedure was found to be computational expensive. For this reason, the analytical solution of a reference case was obtained and used to validate a finite difference scheme. The indirect problem of the IHCP is solved via the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Preliminary results are shown to demonstrate the method. Future actions consist of calibrating the experimental setup, benchmark with known materials and report uncertainty.


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