Modelling of thermal conductance during microthermal machining with scanning thermal microscope using an inverse methodology

In this study, a general methodology for determining the thermal conductance between the probe tip and the workpiece during microthermal machining using Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM) has been proposed. The processing system was considered as an inverse heat conduction problem with an unknown thermal conductance. Temperature dependence for the material properties and thermal conductance in the analysis of heat conduction is taken into account. The conjugate gradient method is used to solve the inverse problem. Furthermore, this methodology can also be applied to estimate the thermal contact conductance in other transient heat conduction problems, like metal casting process, injection molding process, and electronic circuit systems.