Thermal Spreading and Contact Resistance

9Further Applications of Spreading Resistance

In this chapter, we consider several special and unique applications where thermal spreading resistance theory plays a major role in transport phenomena; for example in sliding contacts of tribology applications, mass diffusion with and without chemical reaction, transport involving super‐hydrophobic surfaces at low Peclet numbers, electronic microdevices where temperature‐dependent thermal conductivity plays a major role, applications involving phase change such as freezing droplets on a surface, and finally thermal spreading in solid or hollow spheres for packed‐bed applications. These are all applications where performance is controlled by thermal, mass, or viscous spreading principles. In ...