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In this quick tip video, you will learn how you can specify thermal conductance for your contacting bodies.

For bonded contacts in a structural-thermal simulation, select Specify thermal conductance to modify the conductive heat transfer between contact surfaces. You can specify the thermal conductance as a value, or you can specify a material and material thickness. If thermal conductance is not switched on, heat is transferred between the two faces as if there was perfect conduction.

• Select Thermal conductance to specify the conductive heat transfer as a value.
• Select Compute from to specify a material and material thickness, which Discovery then uses to compute the thermal conductance (material conductivity/thickness)

If contact occurs, a small value of thermal contact conductance yields a measured amount of imperfect contact and a temperature discontinuity across the contact surfaces. A small thermal contact conductance can also be used to represent a thin layer of material with a different conductivity, such as a gasket.

For large values of thermal contact conductance, the resulting temperature discontinuity tends to vanish and perfect thermal contact is approached. With a zero value, however, the solver assumes that no heat is transferred across the contacting surfaces.

Note: While Discovery can solve with a value of 0, which specifies no heat transfer between the faces, a project with a 0 value for thermal conductance is invalid when exported to Workbench. You must then replace zero conductance with some small value.