I am running a Steady-State Thermal Analysis in Simulation Mechanical 2013. I want to calculate for a Contact: "Surface", not "Bonded" .
The help guide was very useful in telling me how to set this up and how important the Thermal Resistance number I plug in is. It completely failed however in telling me how to generate this number or what units it should be in:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/ASMECH/2013/ENU/?caas=caas/vhelp/help-dev-autodesk-com/v/Simulation-Me...
Tip: A thermal resistance of 0 --- indicating a perfect contact between the parts --- is not a good choice. A resistance of 0 implies a conductance of infinity, which leads to inaccuracies during the numerical solution. Use a small, nonzero value to simulate such conditions when they exist.
The units being in SI Metric: S*°C/J which I assume I can convert to from K/W (kelvin per watt).
So how to generate this number; all literature on the subject of thermal contact resistance so far requires (along with many other variables) the temperature of both the materials in which you are attempting to define the resistance between. Which is the very reason of why I am running the thermal analysis in the first place!
Please help, is there a resources that can define a reasonable number to use for a given scenario? Metal to Metal under X Pressure with X Surface finish? I just need a ball park number that isn’t going to be 2 x the magnitude of real life.
