Estimation of thermal contact resistance and temperature distributions in the pad/disc tribosystem

In this study, an inverse algorithm based on the conjugate gradient method and the discrepancy principle is applied to estimate the unknown time-dependent thermal contact resistance for the tribosystem consisting of a semi-infinite foundation (disc) and a plane-parallel strip (pad) sliding over its surface, from the knowledge of temperature measurements taken within the foundation. Subsequently, the temperature distributions in the medium can be determined as well. The temperature data obtained from the direct problem are used to simulate the temperature measurements, and the effect of the measurement errors upon the precision of the estimated results is also considered. Results show that an excellent estimation on the time-dependent thermal contact resistance can be obtained for the test case considered in this study. The current methodology can be applied to the prediction of thermal contact resistance in engineering problems involving sliding-contact elements.