The effect of thermal conductivity and friction coefficient on the contact temperature of polyimide composites studied by finite element simulation

For polymer composites, friction heat and the resulting contact temperature determine the tribological performance and even failure once the temperature exceeds the melting point. Therefore, it is essentially important to keep the contact temperature below a relatively low level to achieve high operating effectiveness and safety. In this work, the Finite Element (FE) modeling technique is used to simulate and visualize the maximum contact temperature of polymer composites under ring-on-block tribolgical test. In addition, the tribological tests were conducted to assess the ability of the simulation to predict the contact temperature of the PI composites. The simulated contact temperatures are in well agreement with the experimental results. The error values between the experimental and simulated contact temperature are less than 8%. The reduction of contact temperature by the 40% decrease of friction coefficient is about 9 times than that by 40% increase of thermal conductivity. The simulated results indicate that the contact temperature is more dependent on the friction coefficient rather than the thermal conductivity of the polyimide composites. This work provides a new feasible way for engineers to obtain valuable and precise data in designing tribological systems and also useful in material selection for material scientist.