Thermal analysis and experimental testing of clamping jaws for thermomechanical simulator

This paper presents a thermal analysis of clamping jaws for a thermomechanical simulator, which is compared with the results from a thermal camera and thermocouples placed directly on the specimens during experimental testing. The clamping jaws have several cooling circuits inside of them and are actively cooled throughout the process. The test specimens are in turn heated by high-frequency electrical resistance heating. During the testing, it was observed whether the cooling system is sufficient, partly because polymeric materials are also used on the jaws to electrically insulate the system. Based on the measurements, it was found that even though the test specimen is heated almost to 1000 °C for a long time, the temperature of the jaws does not exceed 40 °C. The suitability of the proposed cooling system was proved and also the satisfactory agreement of experimental measurements with numerical simulations was achieved.