Experimental studies of thermal contact conductance between copper, stainless steel and aluminum samples using a setup developed at ALBA Synchrotron Light Source

Accurate knowledge of the Thermal Contact Conductance (TCC) between surfaces is of great importance for the design of components in particle accelerators, such as mirrors, monochromators, filters, detectors, among others. The TCC depends on many variables such as surface finish, type of material, pressure between samples, temperature and interface materials. The TCC can be found in specialized literature, but it is not always possible to find this information for all applications. This forces the design engineer to assume conservative or optimistic values that can result in over or under sized designs. In this context, an experimental setup has been developed in the Engineering Division of ALBA to evaluate thermal contacts under ambient and cryogenics conditions, in vacuum and for different pressure ranges between samples. This work presents the latest experimental results obtained for sample combinations of Copper, Stainless Steel and Aluminium materials.