Discussion Forum

Here is part of my simulation:

i.imgur.com/2Xs4PCs.png

What I'm doing is having this piece touch another piece (heatsink basically). I'm getting weird numbers that don't match experiment and I've found that most of the heat transfer occurs over the surface of the part and when I add a thermal contact node, any value I give for constriction and gap conductance (in W/m^2 K), I get similar numbers for the temperature of my part as well as this heat flow plot.

What am I doing wrong here? I imagine making the thermal contact conductance closer to 0 should increase my part's temperature, but it has minimal effect. And I would expect the heat flow to be uniform, not near the edges mainly.

I do have an air boundary around my geometry, so this part in the image is also in contact with air. I see why that would add to heat flow being on the surface, but since the two parts are metal, I would assume heat transfer through air would be negligible in comparing, assuming a reasonable contact conductance.