Thermal contact analysis between adjacent surfaces

The present study is concerned with the develop-ment of an Automated Direct method using finite elementtechnique to solve frictionless thermo-elastic contactproblems. The propose~ scheme determines incremently theequilibrium configuration by minimizing the potential-energy of the system considering the contact constraintsand the conventional thermal boundary conditions at thecontact interface.The procedure exploits the steady-state conductionand simple convection heat transfer to get the temperat-ure distribution through the contacting bodies. Using theobtained temperature distribution, the thermal displace-ments are determined within the general framework of thelinear thermo-elasticity. Finally, the common contactconstraints and the conventional thermal boundary condi-tions are adopted through the interface of the adjacentsurfaces to get the final thermo-elastic equilibrium con-figuration.The proposed model circumvents the need for ext-ra complicated mathematical effort required for differentgeometry and boundary conditions. Thus in brief, the