Thermal Contact Resistance at Rough Ceramic–Metallic Joints

What is it about?

Thermal contact resistance (TCR), the resistance to heat transfer between solids with imperfect mating surfaces, is a major thermal bottleneck in many systems including electronics. TCR has been studied primarily for metal in contact with metal contacts but ceramics are used extensively in many thermally demanding industries where metals are not appropriate. Simple statistical TCR models were never validated for ceramic and metallic contacts. In this study, we validate existing TCR models for rough ceramic-metallic contact in atmospheric pressure and vacuum pressure. This is useful because it means engineers can use existing models to predict TCR between ceramics and metals even though ceramics have very different thermal, mechanical and geometric features from metals.

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