Thermal Contact Resistance Measurement Between Alloy Coated Surfaces Versus Temperature and Pressure at the Interface

A measurement campaign of thermal contact resistance using an instrument patented by Alenia Spazio has been conducted. The specimens have been realized according to the exigencies of the electronic equipments design. They were made of a bulk of AC100 Aluminium coated with Ni (thickness 25 through 50 μm) and with Au (thickness 5 μm). Concerning just the latter one, measurements have been carried out interposing a thermal filler (Sigraflex). Moreover measurements at the interfaces Ti/Al and Ti/glass fiber have been performed.

The contact pressure ranged between 0 and 15 MPa and the temperature between 300 and 330 K. The vacuum inside the experimental chamber was better than 10^-2 mbar.

In addition a correlation study has been carried out to determine algorithms fitting the experimental data.