Numerical simulation and experimental validation of a coupled mechanical-thermal-electrical contact model

A three-dimensional mechanical-electrical-thermal coupled model is presented and validated both numerically and experimentally on a classical sphere-plane contact problem. The proposed approach combines a innovative Cell Method (CM) approach for the thermal-electrical analysis with a conventional FEM code for the mechanical analysis. Surface roughness and contact spot density are modeled by means of statistical parameters that can be easily included in a CM model. These parameters depend on the apparent contact pressure whose distribution is assessed with FEM. Numerical and experimental results are discussed in the paper.