Theoretical and experimental study of a thermal contact conductance model for elastic, elastoplastic and plastic deformation of rough surfaces

This study developed a thermal contact conductance model that takes into account surface asperities with elastic, elastoplastic and plastic deformation. The surface asperity model considers the continuity and smoothness of variables across different modes of deformation. Experiments were also conducted to measure thermal contact conductance for samples with different surface roughness when the contact pressure was increased or decreased. The trend of the test data supports the theoretical results.